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Buy.Com Debuts Music Download Site
elucidus writes "Buy.com on Tuesday launched a new digital music download service -- the site, BuyMusic.com, offers a catalog of more than 300,000 songs. The site only loads in Internet Explorer and all the files are Windows Media 9 formatted with DRM. No word yet on whether the public announcement of a supposed gaping hole in Windows Media DRM caused any concern before the launch. Compatible players include the Nomad IIc 9 and Creative's Jukebox Zen."
Could someone please post the story? I've been around here way to long to even begin thinking of clicking on a link with "gaping hole" in the text!
I found this quote below in the FAQs of the Buymusic.com website...ummm am I missing something are there really blank CDs that are "plus" or "minus"?? I thought that only pertained to DVDs....?? _______________________________________ What's the difference between "plus" and "minus" CD burners and CD media? Your CD media, or blank disks, must be compatible with your CD burner. There are two types of burners and four types of media. It doesn't matter if your burner is internal or external, it is either a "plus" or "minus" burner. CD+ burners burn CD+ disks. CD- burners burn CD- disks. Examples: You can burn your music files onto X Brand CD+R disks using your Y Brand CD+ Burner. Or you can burn your music onto W Brand CD-R disks using your Z Brand CD- Burner.
the site only loads in Internet Explorer and all the files are Windows Media 9 formatted with DRM.
No thanks, I'll stick with my iMac and iTunes store, thanks...
...300,000 channels to shiat to choose from...
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
WHY OH WHY do these folks have to RESTRICT access to these sites to people ONLY running IE? Yes, I know that I can't really use their site like they want me to, but what I just want to explore it to see what they offer. They just lost a potential customer...
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
What if you download a 50 cents song????
By Sandeep Junnarkar
.Net technology, the software needed to run Web applications written with Microsoft's development tools.
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
July 22, 2003, 9:51 AM PT
update NEW YORK--Buy.com on Tuesday launched a new digital music download service, hoping to reprise Apple Computer's early success with its iTunes music store.
The new site, BuyMusic.com, offers a catalog of more than 300,000 songs from the five major labels, including Warner Music and Universal Music Group, and from independent recording companies.
Prices for the service start at 79 cents per downloaded song, which is one of the lowest rates for digital downloaded music, and $7.95 per album. The site caters only to people with computers running Microsoft Windows and the Windows Media Player 9 software.
The launch marks the beginning of what will likely be the entry of large e-commerce companies into the digital music world.
Much as iTunes helped drive sales of Apple's music players, Buy.com hopes to direct users of its service to its online stores.
"We have the BuyMusic store, which will have all kinds of devices for playing music, including digital music players, and CD-Rs as well," said Scott Blum, founder and CEO of Buy.com.
The company has earmarked about $40 million for an ad campaign that includes 2,050 television commercial spots over two weeks, 90 percent on national TV, Blum said. Despite the flurry of ads, he expects the service to grow slowly toward its goal of a million downloads a day. He expressed optimism about reaching that milestone by the end of the year, but also acknowledged that the service may never reach that level.
Apple, by contrast, soared in the first weeks after the iTunes launch in April, in what was widely seen as the most attractive pay-per-song music download service yet to hit the Internet. The company sold 5 million songs in iTunes' first eight weeks of operation.
The iTunes service offers the same licensing terms for every song it makes available, while the BuyMusic.com service has various terms based on its deals with individual recording companies.
"All five majors and the indie deals all have the same basic understanding that we are going to take the music download it to a hard drive and be able to transfer it to a CD or a digital music player. But they have different rules of usages per label," said Blum. "Some are as flexible as burning 10 disks, and some are three. It really depends on the label and the artists."
BuyMusic.com's terms of sale also shut out several major digital music players from receiving downloads. The company specifies that devices are allowed to store digital music files and play them back in analog form but must not be able to transfer them on to other electronic devices. For example, consumers with an Archos device, an iPod competitor, would not be able download music because that system allows them to transfer music to other devices. Apple's iTunes site doesn't face a similar issue because iPods have a built-in block against that capability.
BuyMusic.com's infrastructure also relies heavily on Microsoft's
"When you get to the site, it is going to be painfully obvious that we have a partnership with Microsoft in regards to the way we built the site and run the site," said Blum.
Blum also called on the leaders of the music industry to work together to develop a standards organization like the ones in the computer industry to bring cohesion to the various music services.
This organization "needs to make a standard way to download among the five major labels," said Blum. "It needs to be consumer-friendly and protect the interests of the artists as well."
One strike was enough, but three?
Gimme Mozilla, XMMS and MP3s or Ogg.
Boxed in dead ends? No way.
Different licenses for different songs with varying limits for burning versus uniform licensing for all songs with unlimited burns. It's going to be hell making your own custom music CD using that service. I'm sticking with Apple, and once Apple releases its PC iTunes, I'm sticking that on my PCs as well.
In order to take full advantage of BuyMusic.com's offerings you must be on a Windows Operating System using Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher.
I mean, does it hurt to at least let me know what restrictions / term of use you have on your music? THAT does not take f'kn IE, does it?
You can count me out, buy.com. I will patiently wait for Apple.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
.79/song is better than .99, but still these sites need a flat monthly fee, some sort of subscription, for all the downloads you want--or even put a reasonable limit on it.
it should be marketed like cable tv.....back in the 70s people would say you're crazy if you suggested paying for TV, but now everybody does.
!(^((ri)|(mp))aa$)
Coldplay for .99
.89
.79 cents but I haven't found one artist yet who's songs are that price.
My Bloody Valentine for
Its funny that they say songs cost
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
They didn't really emphasize that in the full page ad in USA Today. This is totally useless to me as a Linux user. I had gotten my hopes up, too.
Don't worry, we'll set up a linux only site featuring RMS' greatest hits! Infact, We'll pay you to download 'em!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
hope you have IE or you won't get into the site. and of course you'll need WMP 9 in order to actually listen to the music.
:)
the price seems to be right (lower that iTMS!), but for someone like me who is terribly averse to IE and considers WMP to be akin to a virus, this is not an enticing service. 'course with the sheer volume of windows users who aren't like me, buy.com might be onto something. they've beaten apple to the punch as far as the windows platform goes.
and since i got turned away from the site for not using IE and got so disgusted that i left, i don't know what kind of restrictions besides WMP 9 they have put on the music (burn songs to cd? share with others? etc.).
oh well, good thing i have a Mac
Guess that's one way to make sure that the site will stay up.
If haven't felt this excited since seven-minute abs was poised to replace eight-minute abs.
Hmm to be expected.
The suits at the majors aren't ready for an iTunes and it's simplicity/freedom for Windows yet (that why we don't have one yet).
So we'll have to deal with wannabes with heavier DRM and proprietary WMA files for a little while longer.
Or we can stay with KaZaA...
-"I ate what?"
Sounds like a completely worthless "service". I'll enjoy seeing them fade into obscurity. One year from now we'll see a two-line notice about the service silent shutting down.
O.K., so I went to the site and started looking around. First thing I noticed is that again, Apple's look and feel have been copied. Badly. Even down to the ads. Oh, well, what about the content? Pretty good, although their jazz selection it pretty weak compared to the iTMS, but here is the other deal: lots of songs are listed as Not Available for Sale.????? What?!?
Next issue: Their big deal is that they are cheaper than iTMS, but just look at the wording. Songs as low as 70 cents and albums from 7.95. Bogus.
Also what about the rights management? Aside from the Windows Music format issue, we have no real way to deauthorize a computer that I can find and I have to use IE as my browser due to ActiveX. What about all the other browsers? And here is the biggest thing: No consistency. I have no idea which songs I can burn to CD or put on my iPod (or any other MP3 player that I can think of).
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
"new crappy crippled music site fails due to complete lack of interest from consumers. RIAA blames Joey Smith, age 12, for sharing 9 files with his sister. Joey denies allegation, and says hes only got 12.50, and can't afford the 300,000 lawsuit."
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
And I thought they were going to be decent competition. No guarantee of CD burning, no guarantee on mp3 player support from song to song. Nice try. Ultimately a better effort than Rhapsody or Pressplay, but still second rate. Aside from the technical and licensing problems of this new product, all of iTunes competitors are going to suffer constant comparisons to iTunes. Apple got there first. Apple wasn't the 1st to ever do online music, but Apple is the only one out there who has put actual thought into it and got the key concerns right. Buy is nothing but a copycat, copying good ideas that Apple got right, but losing something in the photocopy, and offering nothing new and innovative over iTunes. Buy.com. RIP.
Does some of it go towards the "Get Metallica out of the soup line" fund?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
MS DRM is pure smoke
.
Lucas Gonze
Jul. 15, 2003 08:21 AM
Permalink
Update July 19
Score one for security through obscurity. I haven't found a detailed explanation of the exploit, and I'm out of time for looking. The best documentation I have is mails from the wm-talk list, which I have archived here in mbox format -- you'll need to import these into your mailer to make the file readable.
Worth pointing out: check out the post below titled "Digital becomes Analog."
Update July 15
The crack turns out to be lossy. It grabs the audio stream at rendering time, so doesn't have access to the unencrypted bytes.
That said, this is all gossip. I still don't have access to either the details of the exploit or technical documentation, so can't judge for myself. There's no public documentation on the design of WM9 DRM (or iTunes DRM, for that matter).
If any regulars on AVSForums run across the original reference, I'd be grateful for a pointer.
Folks on AVSforums say they have successfully used tools from the Microsoft software development kit to rip and re-encode audio protected by Microsoft DRM in the WindowsMedia 9 format. This is only a rumor at this point -- I haven't seen the crack myself, but WM9 developers seem to be taking it as gospel.
How did these criminal masterminds pull off this incredible feat? Did they crack an encryption key? Did they beat an MS employee with a rubber hose? Did they heat a CPU in a microwave oven? Was it a buffer overflow? An underflow? What was this remarkable feat?
Incredibly, there was no exploit needed. These wily crackers merely had to write a program using well documented 100% aboveboard functions provided by Microsoft. It was not hard, involved no breakthroughs, did not depend on reverse engineering, and did not need a key. All they did was build the right DirectShow graph, and since DirectShow is a tool for third party software developers to build shipping software, ISVs can easily offer an all-in-one solution to strip DRM from content without fear of the DMCA.
What this means is that the DRM on which both Microsoft and their many partners in the RIAA and MPAA are counting on is nothing but a sham. There is no DRM in MS DRM.
Lucas Gonze is the former Cofounder and CEO of WorldOS Corp., a decentralized infrastructure provider, and an industry expert on the technical infrastructure requirements of Instant Messaging.
(* You now have the option to post anonymously, or post as a member of the O'Reilly Network.)
Comment on this weblog
Showing messages 1 through 7 of 7.
Titles Only Main Topics Oldest First
* Digital becomes Analog
2003-07-19 10:40:21 anonymous [Reply]
The DRM decoding and re-encoding is a regression back to analog re-recording degeneration. Thanks Microsoft, MPAA, RIAA, etc., for turning the technological clock back.
* Unless you control the hardware, too . .
2003-07-15 17:57:53 anonymous [Reply]
. . . nothing will be uncrackable. Hence the NGSCB or "Palladium" efforts.
* this article is smoke
2003-07-15 15:40:47 anonymous [Reply]
* re-encode == LOSS of quality
2003-07-15 11:12:23 anonymous [Reply]
there is a quality loss, you will always be able to re-encode DRM protected music, but there is a loss.
cracking the DRM would be getting to the encoded code out of the "encryption", without a re-encode.
there a numerous ways to re-encode a AAC file purchased from the iTunes Music Store.
o re-encode == LOSS of quality
2003-07-15 12:47:31 lucas_gonze [Reply]
depends on how the re-encode works. Putting a microphone up to the speaker is one thing, picking up bits direct from the original is another. Can't say I know enough about this yet to say which one it is, but I'm inclined to believe it's direct bits because it happens within
These are 128kb WMA files. Hardly CD Quality; in fact if you put these on a scale where on one end is FM radio and the other is CD Audio, these are probably closer to FM radio than CD.
I mean, what's up with these low bit rates? Do people really think this stuff sounds good?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
take a look at the restrictions. take a look at the hodge podge of rules. take a look at the shameful paraodies of the apple music commercials.
maybe they should have named it:
hownottobuymusic.com
Thank you for visiting BuyMusic.com.
In order to take full advantage of BuyMusic.com's offerings you must be on a Windows Operating System using Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher.
Dear Buymusic.com: Thank you for turning away my buisness, Im sure one of your competitors *COUGH* itunes *COUGH* Would be happy to take it.
Any chance of anything like this (preferably one that is capable of running on a more secure browser and computer) coming to Europe any time soon?
AT least, it claims it will work with the Nomad Jukebox 3.
It did put a popup up that it wouldn't work unless you had WMP9, and I was wondering if, since the machine I'm currently on doesn't, it would refuse to load at all.
It's slow as all hell, though, right now. and I'm not sure I like the way they broke up the selections, but still... It'll be interesting to see how this does, since it seems to be set up as a competitor to iMusic.
Brazil has decided you're cute.
The pricing is variable, anywhere from $.79 to $1.49. The heterogeneous nature of the service licensing should help doom buymusic.com to failure, but who knows? The iTunes Music Store needs to come to Windows SOON.
Do not buy anything from spammers.
They recently started spamming ALL Email addresses in their database, regardless of whether the account is inactive, supposedly deleted (I have 2 of these), opted-out of their junk spam or in any other status. If they have the Email in their db, you will be spammed.
I'm getting six copies of every spam of theirs after about 2 years of silence from these scum.
More details at Google Groups.
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spamming scum
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Your digital media player must be Digital Rights Management (DRM) compliant, because your music download files use DRM license encryption technology. Non-DRM compliant digital media players will not decrypt or play your music files.
There are also primary and secondary licenses (secondary licenses so you can play the song on a second computer but NOT copy it to an SDMI DRM digital music player). Each label decides if and/or how many times you can copy a song.
So the whole "relatively open, exceedingly easy" part of the iTunes Music Center just completely passed them by. Good to know.
Okay, take a look at the ads on that page (assuming you have IE & Windows Media Player). They're blatant rip offs of Apple's iPod ads of yore. Of course, I can't find a link to them on Apple's site.
This reminds me of various posts I used to see on usenet, like this one.
Can you say Me too?
Michael C. Hollinger
Like it or not, they are the largest player out there, and if places like this don't cater to them, then they are dead in the water.
Until we as a community have that much power, we are stuck outside looking in.
+ the DRM aspect.. they don't want the RIAA to come after them for catering to 'pirates'.
Speaking of, is there a way we could still play them if we used IE under wine or something, and saved them locally? Or does the DRM component corrupt the file as i suspect..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just click on their link to microsoft's ie website. Click on the download link and choose linux (or BSD) for your choice of operating systems. What's the big deal?
These songs are licensed case-by-case and can have different limits set by the publisher as to how many times they can be burned to CD, transferred to a portable music player, etc. And if you lose the music on your primary system, you'd better have made backups: "...Once a song is on your computer, it is your responsibility. If your computer is lost or damaged, BuyMusic.com is not obligated to replace your music after it has been downloaded..." (this from their help page).
Overall, pretty restrictive, and (of course) no iPod support. There seems to be little to differentiate this from previous services, except for the lack of a membership fee and a $40 million budget for an advertising campaign...
So its compatible with the nomad and rio? What about the ipod, it does have something like 20% marketshare you know. Oh wait, its not DRM enabled. I dont think this will take off, its still too retrictive compared to apples model.
Does it scare anyone else that the top 12 songs out of the top 100 in the Pop/Rock category are all off of Cher's "Very Best of Cher" CD?
Because they're interested in making a profit.
Is it just me or do the 'BuyMusic' commercials look like blatent ripoffs of Apple's commercials?
Shouldn't be surprised I guess. Lot's of people copy what Apple does well.
I say "good". No, I probably won't use it - I can't play the WMV files, and I own an iPod anyway. Yes, I use the Apple iTunes store - and I've spent more money there than I have in years on music (though, if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't have gotten the Steve Martin CD for my long drive).
But this is good because of competition. I expect it will do fairly well - people will check it out and buy some stuff, some won't check "between the lines" about the CD burning and such. Will it do as well as the iTunes store? Maybe - maybe not.
But if starts making money at all, it's competition. Apple will be spurred to work faster to get iTunes for Windows out, and to work harder with other MP3 companies to include AAC codecs. Which will spur Buy to change it's licensing (or its negotiations with companies holding the music licenses), and maybe later on, all music will be burnable to your own CD. (I'm not sure how many handhelds you can put it on - my assumption is "infinite", but I haven't seen the small print - I don't run Internet Explorer). Which will perhaps prompt Apple to cut prices, maybe rise the computer amount you can license your songs on from 3 to 5.
And round and round the competition game goes.
CDBaby is about to become a front end for independent musicians (where's spell check when I need it) who want to get onto iTunes - $40 to start, then CDBaby takes 9% of the profit, the musicians get the rest.
Which, if that takes off in any way, may change some of the dynamics of the music business. Oh, hardly a lot - most people still get their music in the stores so big music companies doing the promotion/advertising/distributing will hold most of the cards, but if it changes by as much as 10%, that's huge - and could lead to better contracts for musicians. Which might make the music companies compete for more fair, balanced contracts.
And around and around goes the wheel of competition.
It's all about competition. I love that word. "Compete". Makes things better through a struggle. "Compete fairly" are better words, of course, which is why there are governments about to smack things down when they get to monopoly status, because at that point, competition is lost.
And who knows? In a year, we could have tons of online music. People will discover what contracts work and what don't, and things may change for the better.
Or - I could be wrong. But I hope not.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
read the "license restrictions" area at this site: http://www.buymusic.com/support/help.aspx#Minimum_ Downloading
I don't need to quote anything, just read it and laugh with me at what they're doing.
And the WMA format has superior compression/sound quality than MP3.
I think this whole $x.x9 thing sucks. Give me a nice round number, makes handling money so much easier when you dont have to fiddle around with the smallest coins.
Not many of the songs I'm looking for here... Some radiohead, but no b-sides No sigur ros at all!
Kazaa has 845,492,187 songs. They're all free, too.
Hmm, let's see, here's a "best of" Judas Priest album. I can do a one-time download of a crippled non-CD-quality set of copy protected files that only work on a subset of machines for $12.69. Or, on the buy.com music page, I can buy the same album, at a higher quality, on physical media, in a universal format with no copy protection, including inserts with pictures, lyrics, etc., for $10.98. Gee, that's a tough choice...
The ads are all stolen from Apple, and it's all in DRMized WMA format so that you can only burn a song to a CD or upload it to a portable audio device (besides the iPod, it doesn't support WMA) a certain number of times. However, it will probably win, unless Apple releases iTunes for Windows soon...
Tommy Lee is loaded, you should be too!
Truer words were never spoken, my friend.
A publicly traded company exists solely to make profits for shareholders.
While it doesn't look to be too shabby a system, I think the rather extreme limits on many of the licenses will be a turn off. Also, I think that a web interface is the wrong way to go. Web browsers are instruments of frustration, not slick customer experience. I think apple's strategy of embedding the interface in another app is superior, and likely to go over better. Also, I don't see one click mentioned on buymusic, and that has been a way to bring in impulse buys for apple. It could be there, but I didn't see it. And while they have a lower minimum price, it seems most of the prices are about the same as or higher than apple's prices. Pros: some low prices, a good selection, and available to more people (unfortunately not including me). Cons: web interface, limiting (and complicated, since it varies from song to song, which may upset people who expect consistency) DRM, not going to be the only kid on the block for long.
For to end yet again.
After hopping on a PC and doing a few quick searches for music, I noticed that there are hundreds if not thousands of songs in their system which are "Not Available for Sale"... They still have a 30-second preview and album info, but you can't buy them. I wonder how many songs in total there are like this... they seemed to be in every search i did.
Second you cant authorize more than one computer to play said tracks either. Although the same hacking rule applies here as well
Third ITS WINDOWS MEDIA!!!
I mean honestly Apple might be using their new .ACP or whatever extention it is, but when you look at it, all it is is a simple mp4 with some code added to it for rights protection, and even here your at least allowed to have it on a unlimited amount of CD's and Players that support it. Its only the computers your limited to, and even then its at least 3, and you can deauthorize at will if you change computer or need to for whatever reason.
As for more songs, true apple only had 200,000 at start, but I am sure they are close if not supassing that amount now.
Its a nice attempt to create a PC based music sales set-up, but I honestly do see it as a threat to the iTunes music sales. If they sell 5million in the first month maybe, but if they sell a lot the first few times then drop off, then we know what the answer to how well they did is.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
You must be Bill Gate's wife to think this is good stuff.
1) WMA is a poor competitor to MP3 or AAC.
2) WMP isn't the greatest thing. Even the new Real Players whips the llama's ass compared to WMP
3) 128kb???? This is like paying to listen to the radio!
Honest to god, if MS shoved you shit on a broken plate, you'd tell me how good the dinner was.
Check the EULA for this shit. Pure crap. I don't want an EULA that tells me I'm restricted to legally using my music only on approved players - isn't it bad enough that they use a fucking proprietary format, now they want to legally restrict me from using "unapproved" players? They can go fuck themselves up a tree with that attitude - when I buy a CD, I can play it on any damned player I want, and I expect the same rights when I buy music for download. At least with iTunes, you can transcode, burn to CD-R, etc. If I can't transcode it to MP3 and put it onto my mini-CD/MP3 player, you aren't getting a penny from me. And did I mention, go fuck yourselves buy.com.
I just randomly looked up 10 different albums. And most of the album prices were at $12.95. Most track prices were at $.99. How is this cheaper? Yeah they start at $.79. I haven't found that many yet. There is something to be said about consistency.
They still just don't get it do they?
Hopefully they will learn soon. I know people would like to have a legit collection of music on their computer. But paying $10,000 in cds to get a track here and there isn't feasible. (and even if it is to some people who wants to sit and rip songs all day long. Some people don't mind but I got better stuff to do).
Apple had it right but they need more support. On a side note, it will be fun to watch this crash and burn. I can't wait to laugh at the people who made this business. A group of top execs will be looking at each other asking what went wrong.
OK, I went to the site and noticed their restrictions information. Each song comes with a certain limit to how many times it can be downloaded, transfered to a portable, and burned.
My question is, what exactly does burning mean? Can I burn the tracks to a regular audio CD which I can play in my CD player (and, hence, re-rip to MP3)? Or does the song go to a data CD in WMA9 format, making it pretty much useless?
If anyone knows, I would really like an answer.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
20 kbps? Are you joking? That might make it onto my wife's 5-year-old Rio (well it won't considering it's not a "supported" device) but why bother burning a 20 kbps file onto a CD?
Also, I can somewhat understand limiting the number of times you can burn a CD with the track (although once on CD, it can be ripped and copied as much as you want so it's a moot point as always). But I don't understand the limitation of only being able to download the file onto a portable device X number of times. Who came up with it and why, why, why? It just doesn't make any sense.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Granted I usually buy stuff that is not RIAA affiliated thanks to the RIAA Radar, but I prefer the CD because it looks nice and it's a great way to ensure that my investment is safe. I just rip the CD as some oggs and add them to my playlist.
There's no DRM, no media player lockin, nothing of the kind. Get off your asses and search for the album online if you think it's too expensive in the stores in your area. I've found albums on cduniverse.com for $10.75 that go for $18 at tower records and sam goody.
With the CD it really is "CD quality." You won't get that with a 128k AAC or WMA download. You also won't get the ability to mix and match your stuff on a mix CD at the same quality as the original, the ability to use whatever format you choose and use any mp3 player you want. I plan to buy an iPod eventually, when I get one I won't have to worry about the format my music collection is in and how to make mp3s from it for my iPod because I have the CDs.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Worth pointing out: check out the post below titled "Digital becomes Analog."
Update July 15 The crack turns out to be lossy. It grabs the audio stream at rendering time, so doesn't have access to the unencrypted bytes.
That said, this is all gossip. I still don't have access to either the details of the exploit or technical documentation, so can't judge for myself. There's no public documentation on the design of WM9 DRM (or iTunes DRM, for that matter).
If any regulars on AVSForums run across the original reference, I'd be grateful for a pointer.
Folks on AVSforums say they have successfully used tools from the Microsoft software development kit to rip and re-encode audio protected by Microsoft DRM in the WindowsMedia 9 format. This is only a rumor at this point -- I haven't seen the crack myself, but WM9 developers seem to be taking it as gospel. How did these criminal masterminds pull off this incredible feat? Did they crack an encryption key? Did they beat an MS employee with a rubber hose? Did they heat a CPU in a microwave oven? Was it a buffer overflow? An underflow? What was this remarkable feat?
Incredibly, there was no exploit needed. These wily crackers merely had to write a program using well documented 100% aboveboard functions provided by Microsoft. It was not hard, involved no breakthroughs, did not depend on reverse engineering, and did not need a key. All they did was build the right DirectShow graph, and since DirectShow is a tool for third party software developers to build shipping software, ISVs can easily offer an all-in-one solution to strip DRM from content without fear of the DMCA.
What this means is that the DRM on which both Microsoft and their many partners in the RIAA and MPAA are counting on is nothing but a sham. There is no DRM in MS DRM.
Lucas Gonze is the former Cofounder and CEO of WorldOS Corp., a decentralized infrastructure provider, and an industry expert on the technical infrastructure requirements of Instant Messaging.
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
Destroy, Remove, Molest ?
Free speech is getting expensive...
BuyMusic.com, offers approximately 300,000 songs for download in all categories of music from Top Ten to rare independents. Rare Independents? I don't think so. All of the searches I made returned zilch. 300,000 songs is not an extensive selection considering 99% of them are by "artists" like Limp Bizkit and Eminem.
"All universal moral principles are idle fantasies." -The Marquis de Sade
From their FAQ:
Content Use Rules. All downloaded Content is sublicensed to End Users and not sold, notwithstanding use of the terms "sell," "purchase," "order," or "buy" on the Site or this Agreement. Your Digital Download sublicense is non-exclusive, nontransferable, non-sublicenseable, limited and for personal entertainment use only within the United States. End Users who buy Digital Downloads may play the Digital Downloads an unlimited number of times on the same registered personal computer to which the Digital Download is originally downloaded.
So, I'm not actually buying the songs, just licensing them. Unless I'm using the exact same computer, my use of the songs are limited.
Different Record Label Companies Permit Different Added Uses Of Their Digital Downloads. Information on the Site will state all of the following permitted additional uses, if any, of the Digital Downloads pertaining to a particular music song, partial album or album ("the Works"): (i) the number of allowable transfers to other computers owned by you and registered with the Site, (ii) the number of transfers of each Digital Download to approved electronic Portable Devices, (iii) the number of Compact Discs that may be "burned" in making permanent copies in an uncompressed form conforming to the industry "Red Book" technical specifications to either "write once" blank recordable CD-R compact discs conforming to the industry standard "Orange Book Part II" technical specifications and/or blank "re-writable" CD-RW compact discs (collectively, "Metadata Information"). No other uses of Digital Downloads are permitted.
End User may only use, copy, transfer and display the Digital Downloads as stated in the particular music song or album's Metadata Information. Metadata Information is displayed next to each song, partial album or album offered. To determine how many copies, or "CD-burns," are permitted, click on the icon representing a CD-ROM. To learn how many transfers to registered personal computers or Approved Electronic Devices are permitted, click on the computer or headset icons. As a condition of purchasing a Digital Download, you represent to BuyMusic that you understand a particular song or album's Metadata Information, which is hereby incorporated by reference. All other rights are reserved.
Each song offered will have different "rules" associated with it. Oops...sorry, you've transferred that song too many times to your iPod, you can't do that anymore.
The FAQ is worth a read. If you lose your songs (hard drive crash) you have to pay for them again. You agree to be spammed by them (purchasing a song apparently constitutes acceptance of email solicitation). Bah...could go on and on.
I also have to wonder what happens when you buy a new computer...
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
For quickly browsing, but not having bought anything from either, it looks to me that iTunes still has a better music selection (at least in the genres I look for). Additionally, iTunes albums seem to be cheaper for the most part (most of them are $9.99 regardless of how many songs are on the CD - many of the ones here seem to be $13-14). I also don't like how the singles are different prices.
----
Bryan Samis
http://www.thesamis.net
One of the big flaws with the DRM on Microsoft's side has been that DRM is locked to the workstation. The iTunes Music Store did away with that, by allowing music to be locked to the person that bought it. You can easily authorize and deauthorize ANY Macintosh anywhere to be able to play your music.
Also, ALL songs on the iTMS have the SAME restrictions: unlimited CD burning. unlimited iPods, and up to 3 Macs. This makes life sooo much easier for the end user. If the end user has to deal with different restrictions on different songs, then eventually they are going to just give up and go back to Kazaa or buy CDs.
Making the life of the end user easy is what Apple has focused on since the first MacOS. Sure, power users may get annoyed with limitations in some of the iApps Apple releases, but in the end the Mac is the only UNIX box on the planet that just about everyone's grandmom could use.
... but, for once, Apple has done something better than another company.
... its Mozilla Firebird v0.6 or bust, baby.
Whew. Its going to take me *years* of therapy to come to grips with that statement.
Buy.com is missing the boat entirely here. While $.79/song is nice, w/o the ability to copy the songs freely, and have them downloaded in a usable, preferable format (mp3 vs whatever-M$-is-putting-out), the overall product is not that desirable. And, FWIW, I don't *ever* launch MSIE anymore these days
I guess... well, here's looking forward to Apple coming out w/ a way to use their iTunes service via Windows or Linux.
w00t ? I'm still shocked by what I had to say... Apple, better than another company? Where's that single malt Scotch...
It's a new service. If they get enough requests, they may (doubtful) spend the time (money) necessary to support other browsers too. Though, with the windows media DRM, it looks like you'd be out of luck with Linux anyway. Though I was ticked that I couldn't use Windows Moz/Firebird, but it's their choice.
"It needs to be consumer-friendly and protect the interests of the artists as well."
Har har har. While I'm sure it'll be relatively easy to pay and download, doesn't the fact that the music is in Windows Media format mean that you can't play it in any device that doesn't support Windows Media files?
On this page: http://www.buymusic.com/support/help.aspx, it says:
"Before tracks are copied to your CD, they are inspected and, in some cases, converted to a file type. This process takes several minutes." Since it doesn't specify what file type is being created, should we assume it'll be all-device compatible WAV-files? Or is that a nebulous way of saying it'll stay in WMF?
Last, since I've seen nothing more than *1* track from various indie artists on the site, I'll have to guess that all money from the purchase of music here goes directly to the label, not the artist. How again does this protect the interests of the artists?
I'll pass.
From the site:
Content Use Rules. All downloaded Content is sublicensed to End Users and not sold, notwithstanding use of the terms "sell," "purchase," "order," or "buy" on the Site or this Agreement. Your Digital Download sublicense is non-exclusive, nontransferable, non-sublicenseable, limited and for personal entertainment use only within the United States. End Users who buy Digital Downloads may play the Digital Downloads an unlimited number of times on the same registered personal computer to which the Digital Download is originally downloaded.
Different Record Label Companies Permit Different Added Uses Of Their Digital Downloads. Information on the Site will state all of the following permitted additional uses, if any, of the Digital Downloads pertaining to a particular music song, partial album or album ("the Works"): (i) the number of allowable transfers to other computers owned by you and registered with the Site, (ii) the number of transfers of each Digital Download to approved electronic Portable Devices, (iii) the number of Compact Discs that may be "burned" in making permanent copies in an uncompressed form conforming to the industry "Red Book" technical specifications to either "write once" blank recordable CD-R compact discs conforming to the industry standard "Orange Book Part II" technical specifications and/or blank "re-writable" CD-RW compact discs (collectively, "Metadata Information"). No other uses of Digital Downloads are permitted.
End User may only use, copy, transfer and display the Digital Downloads as stated in the particular music song or album's Metadata Information. Metadata Information is displayed next to each song, partial album or album offered. To determine how many copies, or "CD-burns," are permitted, click on the icon representing a CD-ROM. To learn how many transfers to registered personal computers or Approved Electronic Devices are permitted, click on the computer or headset icons. As a condition of purchasing a Digital Download, you represent to BuyMusic that you understand a particular song or album's Metadata Information, which is hereby incorporated by reference. All other rights are reserved.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
I set my Opera 7.11 to identify itself as MSIE 6.0, and behold: got through to pay and download the song with no problems. I'm curious now: if I downloaded the song, would I be able to play it even without the ActiveX control? And if so, will I have gotten it without any DRM protection?
Just like the iTMS, this thing isn't available for shoppers from outside the US. At least the iTMS lets you buy them with a US credit card - these guys restrict by IP:
BuyMusic.com Available to Domestic Residents Only
We're sorry, but due to license restrictions, BuyMusic.com content is available only to residents of the United States. Your internet protocol (IP) address shows that you are attempting to access this web site from outside the US. Thank you for your interest in BuyMusic.com. We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.
----
Bryan Samis
http://www.thesamis.net
Does the layout of buymusic.com look familiar to anyone else, or is it just me?
Dang, even the google cashe of buymusic.com took forever on my Mozilla. It popped right up with Opera though.
I couldn't find an email to complain about the mandatory IE though. But there's this page: http://www.buymusic.com/support/email.aspx
Maybe sending something to their privacy guys at privacy@buymusic.com could do something though.
For free low-fi songs of a Star Trek band, you should follow the link in my sig.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Need I say more?
and I can record anything I listen to! This would be cheaper than buying CD's, but it's probably not "legal".
stuff |
By Alex Veiga, AP Business Writer, 7/22/2003
LOS ANGELES -- A new Internet music download site for PCs debuting Tuesday boasts the cheapest per-song rates yet but many of the same restrictions on copying that have stymied wider use of other music services.
Although online retailer BuyMusic.com will offer a catalog of more than 300,000 songs from the five major record labels, users of the service will not necessarily have the freedom afforded customers of Apple Inc.'s iTunes service to transfer the music purchased to multiple computers and portable devices, or to burn it to compact discs.
BuyMusic hopes to score the sort of attention that helped drive sales for Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store since its launch April 28.
BuyMusic founder Scott Blum called Apple CEO Steve Jobs "a visionary, but he's on the wrong platform." While Apple users constitute about 3 percent of the personal computer market, BuyMusic is targeting the 97 percent of people with PCs.
BuyMusic, which is based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., will vie for a share of that market with a handful of online music subscription services, including pressplay, Rhapsody, MusicNow and MusicNet, which have not managed to cull substantial customer traffic from the free file-sharing networks.
The service has about 100,000 more songs than iTunes but comparable to pressplay, which was acquired by Roxio and is expected to undergo a relaunch later this year under the Napster brand.
BuyMusic is charging 70 cents for individual song downloads -- 9 cents lower than MusicNow, which previously had the lowest per song price. It's also undercutting competitors' price for a full album download at $7.95. The iTunes' service charges $9.99 for most full albums.
BuyMusic downloads are in Microsoft's Windows Media format.
Still, BuyMusic suffers from some of the same licensing drawbacks that the other PC-based digital music retailers have.
Jobs secured uniform licensing deals from all the record companies that allow all iTunes songs to be burned onto CD an unlimited amount of times, save for a restriction for making multiple CDs with the exact song lists. All songs on iTunes can also be transferred to up to three different computers and to the iPod, a portable digital music player.
Blum was not able to obtain uniform licensing rights from the record labels and artists. As a result, different songs on BuyMusic have different restrictions for how often, if at all, they may be burned onto CDs or copied to other PCs or portable music devices.
By year's end, BuyMusic and the other PC-based digital music retailers are expected to face a competing PC version of iTunes, which has had more than 6.5 million songs downloaded to date.
For the low low low price of $7.95 you can buy .... not much. Teasers. Click around, you'll find that almost all of the songs are the same or *higher* prices as the ones on Apple's music store. I just checked Audioslave from their list of top 5 album downloads. At Buymusic.com its $12.69. At Apple its $11.99.
Also, Apple's store is 100% integrated into iTunes. That makes getting, downloading, & adding music to your library that much easier.
Luckily, MS DRM has (allegedly) been cracked. The DRM is a PITA, take a look:
Make sure you mean to buy your music from your primary computer (for example: your home computer) so that it contains your primary license. The licenses are non-transferable. Example: You cannot buy your music on your home machine and then transfer your primary license to your work machine. The computer you buy from becomes the primary computer with the primary license for that song. You can only copy music from your primary machine via your primary license. See below for details.
Each record label has control over these license restrictions including the number of times you may:
transfer your songs to another computer(s)
transfer your songs to an approved portable digital media player.
burn your songs to CD
BuyMusic.com complies with each record label and adjusts the SDMI license on each of your music downloads accordingly.
Thanks though, I think I'll stick with Apple's music store.
---
"Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that."
Low cost music downloads are definitely the right idea, but the choice of content (digital rights-locked media) is just plain wrong, and a stupid business choice.
Look at it from a business perspective. Your company offers cheap downloads, and delivers media clips that employ Digital Rights Management (DRM) to somehow restrict how, when, and where this media can be stored for later recall. These are unnecessary complications at the user side.
And then comes along I, your competitor, and also offers cheap downloads of "pure audio" - MP3, OGG, FLAC, whatever. Users who buy from my site get audio that they can use any way they like, just like if they owned their own CD or tape. As a result, users overwhelmingly prefer my service because of the tremendous versatility of the media I offer.
And then my business kicks your ass.
I'm not going to be using any digitial music service until they offer my a lossless version of the song. On any high-end audio system the loss through any compression is noticeable. Don't get me wrong, I use mp3s on my laptop and my palm, but on my stereo... that's another story. Audiophiles unite, we need a lossless digital music service!
Later,
Phil
Not being able to purchase and download music is fine and dandy, but not being able to browse the site? No way man, that's just stupid.
Oh, and the site does work with opera 7 under linux for some reason. A hole they forgot to plug? Either way they still lost a potential customer, got a nasty customer feedback, and a rant on my website from this.
Do you really think buy.com is after that 5% Apple audience? or the other 95%+ of the PC users? There's nothing wrong with competition driving the cost down.
The truth is, look and feel is free for copying. Big deal. I'll buy from the cheapest source if I have to endure the look and feel.
In terms of cost. I'm sure Apple isn't making much money with iTune. Apple offer this service to sell BOXES, not music. The make dough on the Boxes, not the outsourced music.
I'm sure buy.com isn't making much dough from selling music, either. Their business model is to spam you to death while you browse thier site for music.
Buy.com search will list songs that they do not offer saying it is "not available for sale" Shame that the artists I'm after are not listed on Apple or any other sites for online resale.
Couldn't you setup a machine to burn an audio CD via WMP, and then simply rip the CD back to MP3's thus squeezing out the DRM crap?
I love how they keep emphasizing "Digital Media Player", as if by simply ignoring concept of MP3 will make them go away.
"You're either outstanding, or outprocessing"
I've listened to 192kb WMA's and I can tell them every time. They're "lifeless". But the key is:
No lossy compression at 128kb is good enough to
capture a CD. It just isn't possible.
To the people who think you can, you just have bad hearing.
-T
There are plenty of bands that were influential, though not popular whose work is no longer available at my local record store.
Bands like Lets Active, Voice of the Beehive, Throwing Muses and countless others. Or bands that were one hit wonders, I mean who wouldn't pay 99 cents for a copy of "A E I O U and Sometimes Y" by Ebn Ozn?
The problem is that a lot of music is just impossible to find, I'd like a service that at least expended some effort to make this music available.
Too much focus is put on getting new Artists stuff out there. Why pay 8-10 dollars to download an album, and not get liner notes, lyrics etc... there's also the issue of the DRM.
Anyway, give me a music service where I can find obscure, and older stuff, and I'll buy music online, but no one (not even Apple) is doing this!
My other sig is extremely clever...
Jolly Terry Bradshaw
thanks for the reply mentioning William Shatner, I remembered Terry Bradshaw, 70s QB for the Steelers, recorded an album.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
can't you rip to mp3? wouldn't that defeat the
whole drm thing? (although you'd lose some sound quality)
what am I missing here?
BuyMusic.com Available to Domestic Residents Only
We're sorry, but due to license restrictions, BuyMusic.com content is available only to residents of the United States. Your internet protocol (IP) address shows that you are attempting to access this web site from outside the US. Thank you for your interest in BuyMusic.com. We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.
Hey, no problem, I'll just go download it on Kazaa or some other P2P. Thanks anyway!
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Ugh. Wish they'd stop coming at this backwards.
wordclock records
The value the consumers are willing to pay for a song is not by any means global. 79 cents of a dollar is not what a consumer would pay in India, China or Brazil, for instance.
The music industry cant ignore those markets, but once they actually drop the price there what stops US citizens from buying these lower prices songs?
Oh well, there can always be taxes over american owned music, sold in mexico and exported back to the US! :o that sounds definitely something george jr. would be willing to do.
While browsing around the site, I was stunned to see how much the "rights" varied from song to song. Even on the same album. It really sucks that they went with WM9/SDMI. Good luck backing these puppies up!
What was also surprising is that the selection is not any better than iTunes. Lots of partial albums. Why would a record company restrict onlines sales of albums/singles that are over 15 years old?
I was also turned off at how much the site layout is a blatant ripoff from Apple. Even the ads. Please. One good thing though... We can write reviews! I always felt that was a hole in Apple's site.
Now Apple legal has something to chew on!
Oh well. I suppose that imitation is the finest form of flattery.
The ads on BuyMusic are complete rip offs of the Apple ads. Compare the original Apple iPod ads to the new BuyMusic ads.
At least they could do something original!
iTunes Music Store has a consistent price and license for usage. While there is a DRM component, it is not remotely onerous. You are free to listen to the music you bought on your devices and share (to a reasonable degree) with friends.
BuyMusic.com has quite variable pricing (I've yet to find a song for the mentioned $0.79), and extremely restrictive and variable licensing. And the DRM/SDMI requirements severely limit the digital media players available for use with this system.
And I wouldn't wish WMP 9 on a dog I disliked.
Go there in an IE window (I only loaded IE to complain), and watch the commercials they have. People singing songs while listening to them on some iPod-like device against a white background. Way too similar to Apple's iTMS ads.
Add this to my being pissed off because I run Mozilla 1.4, and WMP 6.4 (will NEVER update my precious mplayer2.exe), and I think I'm going to go kill someone.
Did a search for 'Depeche Mode' ... none of their stuff is 0.79 but there is a 'Tribute to Depeche Mode' album in the results with everything for 0.79 - so it's there, but it seems to be all really unwanted stuff.
Everything I've seen that looks *good* is either 0.89 or (more commonly) 0.99 each.
1) I do not want to drive to a store and browse their horrific layout, surrounded with Nelly-wanna-be's and teeny-boppers.
2) I do not want to obtain an OBSOLETE medium for my music. CD's are out. Why should I be restricted to one artist, one albumn, per medium? CD = 8-track-tape in my mind. I want all my music in one place (think iPod).
3) I do not want to pay $16-$20 when all I want is one song from the Artist I would be willing to buy (yeah, that's what CD's go for around here. Here = New York City/Long Island). And many times the one song I want is not the "single" which is released at close to $8 regardless!
4) I do not want to be unable to backup my music. New CD's are starting to disallow reading in a computers CD drive. Pathetic.
5) I do not want to listen to one artist at a time! I only listen to my music via the playlists I have made. "Party Mix", "Smooth Mix", "Drunk Mix", "Stoned Mix", "Desert Combat Mod v0.38 Mix", etc.
At 79 cents per song thats close enough to the purchase price of a CD for a typical 10 track album. And for that you get far better quality that you can play on your home HI-Fi.
For such a cheap method of distribution as on-line downloading I'd have thought 5 cents per song would be more reasonable. I guess it will have to come down to that kind of level to put an end to on-line music piracy which only exists because the music is so overpriced in the first place.
while sco {
wget -O
}
Does anyone have a script to run wget, DL the ierequired.htm page, while identifying itself as Mozilla 1.4, delete ierequired.htm, and repeat? I can't seem to get anything I type to work.
They only tested up to 128kb in that link. Nobody who cares about their music does less than 192kb.
My point wasn't really about MP3 versus WMA at 128KB I maintain they're both bad at that bit rate, and that's my point. The music offered is at too low a quality to interest me, even if it was in a completely unemcumbered format.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
And unlike iTunes, they all have restrictions on the number of computers they can be on, from 1 to 3, and all except two have restrictions on the number of portables and the number of CD burns you can do.
Remember - from $.79 per song simply means that they guarantee you won't get anything for less than $.79. It's like the diet ads where they say you'll lose up to 20 pounds in a week - that just means that you can't possibly lose more than that, but anything less, including 0, is fair game.
-T
So what happens if somebody buys lots of songs from these guys and then Microsoft releases some upgrade/new version/whatever which stops you from playing the songs? Will buy.com refund you money becasue the songs dont work or do u get to keep buying them over and over again ?
If they plan to market these downloads as actual replacements for CD's then they need to atleast offer a lossless option for users that want it. Maybe 95% of people will take the mpe/wma/ogg lossy, but the FLAC (or whatever) should be available for the other 5% of us.
I just searched through their site a little (using Mozilla on Linux...just need to disable JavaScript). Well over 90% of the songs I found there are $0.99. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the songs that are $0.89, and I haven't found a single song that's $0.79 yet!
They probably talked one of the labels into selling a few thousand songs for less, just so that they could claim the $0.79 minimum price.
I think Apple has it right: keep it simple. People don't like deceptive advertising.
Still, I expect this to be moderately successful, at least until Apple's Windows store comes out later this year.
Artist: 50 cent
Album: $9.99
What button do I push on my portable MP3 player to cause the MAS chip to transform into one capable of decoding Windows Media Audio/
When someone can answer this, I'll be glad to "BuyMusic".
Oh, and beg pardon for Ask(ing) Slashdot a question not best answered by a lawyer or a dentist.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
No autechre, no chemstar.
It's an audio file -- it should play on ANY player! Sorry, but DRM in it's current incarnation is a total bunch of crap. If I buy it, I insist on being able to take my music wherever I go and do what I want to do with it, without any artificial impositions on usage. And yes, that includes fair usage copying, which means being able to make copies for friends.
Maybe I'm being unrealistic, but given the RIAA's recent tactics, I'm not inclined to cut them any slack. So for now, make mine KaZaA (Lite)!
Why is this site overlooked?
-mp3 format
-no DRM
-unlimited downloads for $10-$15/month
-large catalog
-first 50 mp3's are free
Pretty cool. I just downloaded the entire Pavement and Pixies catalogs plus some Noam Chomsky "spoken word". I signed up for 3 months @ $45.
This is weird... on the site in Opera 7 (I guess their method of "faking" and IE signature works) a search fails because they add a trailing \ to the URL "buymusic.com." I'm running Linux.
I wonder if this is a mistake, or a purposeful "breakage" to get people to actually use IE?
Also, I'm sad to see TMBG are on this service. Too bad I already bought their mp3s from another site!
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Somebody posted the fact that the ads look like rip offs of the iTunes ads....they are and the tagline is "music downloads for the rest of us"
Sounds a lot like they're going straight for apple's throat...I wonder what's going to happen when iTunes for windows comes out and the whole windows contingent has access to a good store?
Yeah, but if I was going to obtain music illegally, I would just rather 'steal' it than the method you describe. Both methods are copyright infringement, but Kazaa is cheaper, easier and faster.
WMP files only, IE only, low quality only.... sounds like a GREAT deal to me....
I see this as another attempt at offering the public what they really want: music in a medium that they'll use, and only the music they want. However I see it as a POOR attempt. At least Apple is offering up a better deal, but we still have ownership issues after you pay for your music. Why is this? Once I've paid for it, isn't that one instance mine to do what I please with it?
Maybe this will pave the way for better services and less RIAA involvement, but it's a pretty aweful start if you ask me....
----------
word to your moms... I came to drop bombs...
Can I buy music from outside the United States?
No. Due to licensing restrictions, BuyMusic.com content is available only to residents of the United States.
Hmmm. I wonder how they are enforcing that?
OMG, I've been blinded!
Check out the commercials on their home page. The part about them being apple rip-offs is not bad, but the people, please make them stop!
Rapper's Delight in particular...
Here.
The year 2003. Now we are allowed to copy music we have paid for - our legally acquired songs - between different media and computers only a limited number of times.
From the help page:
[picture of a CD] The Compact Disk icon shows the number of times the song can be downloaded to compact disks.
[picture of a set of headphones] The Headphone icon shows the number of times you can transfer the song to digital media
[picture of a monitor] The Computer icon shows the number of computers you can download your music to in total.
Expect in the near future, this addition to the license:
[picture of an ear] The Ear icon shows the number of times your player will play the song.
And, without any greater stretch of imagination, we finally end up with this:
[picture of a brain] The Brain icon shows the number of times SDMI/DRM/XXX will let you experience our product ("listen to the song") without upgrading your account/brain.
I know there are plenty of people complaining about the IE and WM9 requirement but the fact is it is not nearly as limiting as having to buy a computer from Apple and use a service that is only compatible with an Apple portable. The fact is both services are at fault for using DRM, picking a non-standard file format and restricting service to a particular platform. There is simply no reason a music service needs to restrict itself to one particular platform. I know Apple apologists will talk about "tight integration" till the cows go home but the fact is that the itunes music store basically amounts to a web page that is restricted to one browser.
Here is a partial list of requirements for a decent music service:
Ok, so I go the site, and it has an option that says: Loaded Audio: On. I'm at work, so I didn't want that. I chose to permanently disable them, and I get this:
Your preferences have been updated Thank you. You will never hear sounds again.
I think BuyMusic.com just threatened to deafen me. Hrmph. I guess it's their sounds or no sounds.
I just went to the page using my trusty Mozilla browser and got this message:
Thank you for visiting BuyMusic.com.
In order to take full advantage of BuyMusic.com's offerings you must be on a Windows Operating System using Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher.
BuyMusic.com is not likely to ever see a dime of my money. In fact, they can go screw themselves.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
They're not likely to get any of my business, they don't even have "classical" as one of the category selections! You have to search through manually, to the VERY confusing titles.
For instance, when searching for Rachmaninoff, I see an Arthur Rubinstein collection of Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Op.16 in A Minor. I'm not familiar with this particular piece, and all I have to work with are:
Adagio
Allegro molto
Allegro moderato
1. How am I supposed to know what order these are to be played in?
2. These weren't even concurrent in the results -- there are three movements from another piece in between the Allegro molto and the Allegro moderator. How am I even supposted to know this is all of the movements, without checking another resource?
3. The cd this is on contains one concerto by Grieg and one by Rachmaninoff. There is no indication which is which!! Unless I consulted an outside resource, I would have to buy movements from both pieces to find which is which.
Granted, there aren't many like me, that don't listen to much other than classical. But I would expect a little more help.
.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
This is such a load. Why has everybody that's reporting on this story giving out so much misinformation?
The tracks are STARTING at $0.79 with many over $0.99. There a Missy Elliot track that goes for $1.79 for Gods sake!!!
The albums are STARTING at $7.95 with many over $11.99.
Are all reporters suffering from the NY Times syndrome or what?!?!?!?!?!?
Well, at least for drowsing their site. The funny thing is is that they have backslashes embedded in some of the URLs like the one for the search. Replace the backslash with a slash and it works great.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
The only reason I haven't done these types of services (yet) is that I don't want some 128 kb/s MP3. Ideally, we could choose from MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, .wav, the whole roster of formats. And we could choose from varying quality (e.g. low bitrate for dialup users, super bitrate for people with bandwidth to burn). That way, I would know that my music could have long-term backup potential, and more options, so that if I got a kick ass sound setup, I could use the higher bit rates.
first, what are their download speeds...for all you know it could take all afternoon to get...secondly the comparison to restaurant/cooking is horrible...
how did the parent get +5 flamebait? are there D&D-playing moderators?
ed
SDMI? SDMI?! Does anyone here remember how SDMI was supposed to be the Next Big Thing?
Wow, those buy.com d00dz are so 1997!
Although online retailer BuyMusic.com will offer a catalog of more than 300,000 songs from the five major record labels, users of the service will not necessarily have the freedom afforded customers of Apple Inc.'s iTunes service to transfer the music purchased to multiple computers and portable devices, or to burn it to compact discs.
Ok...so they state right there that "pay for it and use it only here". And they compare directly with iTunes Music Service. Anyone who reads this will go "umm...it's a no-brainer".
Jobs secured uniform licensing deals from all the record companies that allow all iTunes songs to be burned onto CD an unlimited amount of times, save for a restriction for making multiple CDs with the exact song lists. All songs on iTunes can also be transferred to up to three different computers and to the iPod, a portable digital music player.
Oh look...just eight paragraphs down and they mention it again. Do they REALLY expect people to jump up and down with this?
Don't get me wrong...competition is good. But this really isn't competition in my eyes.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Apple restricts their service to 5%~ of all computerdom, and it's a 'cool service'.
The iPod, likewise, was Mac-only for the better part of a year before a Windows version came out. Initially it required FireWire as well, not a common interface on Windows machines, but now that the third generation iPod is out it supports Windows *and* USB 2.0 with nothing more than an extra connector. This was all done gradually, and only after Apple knew that (a) the iPod worked as well as they wanted it to, and (b) there was enough demand for PC compatability for Apple to even spend the time on it.
iTMS is the same way. Apple's got legal issues preventing it from offering songs for sale outside of the USA, but that's being resolved already. Meanwhile, a Windows version of iTunes/iTMS was promised by the end of the year the very same day it was available for the Mac.
Apple's not being snooty and refusing to make iTMS available to non-Macheads. Some things take more time than others, that's all.
ROFLMAO, I'm sure they're trembling in fear of the rant on your website and the six people who will see it.
Below is a reply I posted to their feeback page found here: http://www.buymusic.com/support/email.aspx (IE Only) We have to take the time to let them know why they are unable to sell music on the net. Eventually they will have to change or preferrably die. Boycott the RIAA! www.boycott-riaa.com ************ When are you guys going to get it? People don't want DRM restrictions on their music. I recently uninstalled windows media player. The world is moving to open source. I don't have a single WMA file on my network, and I will never have a WMA file on my network. That's not to say I don't support buying music. If you offered UNRESTRICTED 192K MP3s or even better, high quality Ogg files I would consider your service. By the way, we have found a way to strip DRM using standard MS SDK tools. Read about it here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3517 Since is uses standard tools, it doesn't violate the DMCA. One day the RIAA will learn suing its customers is not the answer. Forcing technological restrictions on its customers is not the answer. Creating un-just ridiculous laws is not the answer. Providing consumers with what they want at a price they are willing to pay does solve the problem. I honestly believe your service will fail.
/.ers have complained for a long time about not being able to buy single tracks off of an album. I read so many posts that went something like, "The album sucks, but I would pay a buck for that track, but since I can't I will just download it". Everyone cheered when Apple did this. Now someone is doing this for the PC. Outside of slashdot, most people use windows and IE and there are legitimate reasons they do it that way (read the faq...oops, you need IE to do that too..that really is dumb, but read up on a previous post and they snipped it for you). But instead of praising them for attempting to give you this, you attack it because it is Windows. This is why our voice isn't taken seriously. Rather than looking at this as an advance in our ability to choose, you put it down because it isn't Linux or Apple (or BSD, etc). I am sure when PC iTunes comes out everyone on here will say how perfect it is. Give me a break. I am sure Buy.com's site isn't perfect, but at least acknowledge that this is a good thing and that it will be even better when Apple's PC iTunes comes out and there is competition.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I can't view the commercials as I am using Safari (not sure why tho, I have the WMP installed along with the plugin it states it needs (WMP)...hmmm).
I only ask because they look like they are exactly like the Apple commercials. Just some person in a white room singing part of a song. Is this what they are?
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Am I the only one that wonders how they are going to recover their $40 million in advertising? Even if they sold 10 million songs, they'd still be $30 million in the red....
Jeeze, they did not even put a mailto the administrator up there. It must be the new IIs default page. Click and drool!
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Near the bottom of the BuyMusic.com index there are three links to their television commericals they have lined up. These commericals aren't just similar to the AppleMusic.com ads, they are identicle. Person standing in front of white background listening to music on headphones (which you can't hear) and singing along, dancing around. Then black text on white background with just one line of text. Apple is usually pretty aggresive when it comes to posers like this-- I wonder if they will act.
The New Root Council, kickin' ass sinc
Picture yourself... on a Boat... On A River... with... Tangerine Trees, and Marmalade SKIES...
Funniest.
Cover.
Ever.
You have to hear it to believe it.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Appears like I won't be buying music there.
> Thank you for visiting BuyMusic.com.
> In order to take full advantage of BuyMusic.com's
> offerings you must be on a Windows Operating
> System using Internet Explorer version 5.0 or
> higher. Download Internet Explorer Here.
Pretty lame.
--- Eat my sig.
A file encoded at 128k (CBR) will always be about the same size (there's a little overhead and such). Doesn't matter if it's ogg, or mp3, or wma.
No, that makes perfect sense. Matches the 40+ year old, corporate drone, demographic that's likely to be interested and capable. Who else would have all the required software, bandwith and give a shit less attitude it would take to push all the EULAs then recieve the music?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The most they are making is .35 / song before their costs. If they are doing TV ads, they are going to never recover their money. Too, any MP3 player they sell is not their own so they keep a very small margin from that and users can always buy an MP3 player from someone else.
.99 a song. But the biggest issue is that their songs do not play on the # 1 windows player: iPod. That is a big problem for them. It's like selling the razors without the handles.
Unlike their advertising, they are charging mainly
Gossip Folks by Missy Elliott for $1.79.
Fired up IE for the first time in months to look at the site. Noticed lack of "Electronic" genre on the left navigation bar, so tapped a few searches for my favorites.
Searching for Photek produced 734 matches, none of which having anything to do whatsoever with the DnB pioneer. The #1 result? Patsy Cline.
The voices are telling me to give in to Buy.com/Microsoft/RIAA and listen to shitty country music. What was I thinking all these years?
y
From the buymusic.com site:
Also, make sure your 'individualization' is 'on'. Some 'spyware' programs advise you to turn it off, but it is a critical component to your DRM licensing decryption protocols.
"Individualization" is just double-speak for allowing Windows Media Player to assign you a GUID (Global Unique ID) and send information to third parties (MS and such) about what you've been doing with your Media Player.
So not only this works on just Windows. Not only you get just DRM-encumbered files. Not only you have to deal with multiple different licenses for different songs. But you also have to agree to them tracking the music you listen to...
Thanks, I think I'll pass.
Actually, I'll put it in more clear term. I'll stay the hell away from this.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
On the one hand I applaud the business model but on the other hand it's still the RIAA who's limiting our multimedia experience here.
I'm tired of the price fixing and the DCMA and (by the way why have CD prices gone up when on every other music media the prices dropped?). And although I'm a Windows user I think I'll wait for the iTunes site to come out with their PC version. I just can't bring myself to buy something when it has all those Primary/Secondary (won't run on my home stereo system) restrictions.
But it's the model that music lovers have been waiting for and now 95% of the PC's can take advantage of what the Mac user's have had for a while now.
But it's the RIAA ... I can't do it (must resist).
And on a different topic, do you think that if user's can download only the songs they like, artists will stop recording mediocre tracks and other crap just to fill an album?
Maybe Windows users will not know any better, but moving around in the site really stinks. The iTunes interface is so much nicer. They copied iTunes layout, but using HTML pages really ruins the responsiveness and the general feel of the site is it is going to take a long time to click through page after page of individual songs.
And what's with the fact that I can only transfer the song three times to my MP3 player. My wife uses a 128 MB MP3 and she is always moving songs in and out of it. With this service after 3 moves she will need to buy the song again!!! And I can't keep a copy of the song on my desktop and my laptop! Only one computer! CD's or iTunes is a much better value!
The two are not the same dude.
If I PAY for a song, and the DRM restricts common "fair use", then I'll be completely guiltless for circumventing it so that I can use the music that I bought fairly for my own personal use.
You on the other hand are just plain stealing.
Well, I agree with other comments that say that the look & feel of the iTMS has been badly ripped off. iTMS has more genres (the one I noticed as being missing from BuyMusic was folk), however the same album (Great Big Sea's Turn) costs $9.99 at the iTMS and $8.89 at BuyMusic. Doh! Well, as a dedicated Tibook user, BuyMusic wasn't going to be an option for me anyway, but it'll be interesting to see if those price differences go away when iTunes makes it to Windows...
iTunes came out, and I was intrigued, but I saw it in action, and I passed. This came out, and just from reading the blurbs, I'm not even gonna check it out. I'll stick with eMusic. One monthly rate, as many downloads as I want, of good quality music in fairly open, non-DRM'd MP3 formats (I wish they also offered OGG formats, but I guess you can't have everything) that I can burn, copy, time-shift, and move to portable players as many times as I want with no need for special software or additional licenses once it's on my machine. Their donwload software is available for Windows, Mac, *and* Linux.
:)
The only complaint I might have is that their selection can be somewhat limited, in the sense that you won't really find the latest Eminem or Avril Lavinge music, but you *will* find a lot of bands that are really damn good in a whole lot of genres, especially if you're willing to let its built in reccomendation system (like Netflix's) guide you to new stuff you might never had heard of before. These aren't just unknowns or guys taping out of their mom's garage, these are actual artists signed to actual labels. The flat monthly fee no matter how much you donwload is sort of liberating in this sense as well, since you can feel free to download an entire album from someone you never heard of before just to try it out, without worrying about it costing you even a single cent more than your usual monthly fee.
Give it a shot, their 50 song/download trial would be worth nearly $50 on iTunes and a little less on this new service. You don't really have much to lose, and you mgiht surprise yourself by learning to love something new.
Also, check out this link for a comparison between iTunes and eMusic: click here.
"Two things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the first one." - Albert Einstein
Once again, Apple comes out with something innovative, and a little later, someone from the Windows world comes up with their own version, just less elegant and less functional. Big surprise.
A personal experience I had with windows media licensing happend about a year and a half ago. I was helping a friend reinstall windows98 after it got hosed up. He originally encoded the files with WMP at default settings. All from CDs he owned mind you! When he restored the files from a CD backup, they wouldn't play because they "originated from another computer".
What I want to know is how will an Windows OS reinstall effect the downloaded music files/DRM?
I'm still clinging to WindowsXP at the tune of my bi-monthly reinstall. (I feel like a retard posting on slashdot and not running linux.)
Even if you get past the browser issue who in the world is gonna pay for a cripled song ? If it's not in mp3 (at least) it's absolutely worthless. Nice try but I ain't bitin yet. LouSir
Yea, it's almost like reading a typo or something. What are these guys thinkiing? THis shit better not catch on!
Speaking as the author of the oreillynet blog, the news is that an anonymous poster revealed the vulnerability that I had given up on finding. Except that followup gossip about the exploit posted on the blog is that it's not the same one I was trying to find, meaning that there are two, but only one has been publically exposed.
CD -> DRM protected lossy audio codec -> wave -> DAC (loss, especially with the crappy dacs in most sound cards) -> 1/8" cable (loss) -> ADC (loss) -> wave -> non DRM lossy codec. Wasn't digital media supposed to get rid of generational loss?
TimeZone
1. limited number of burns, ie. 3 burns - that means you can only burn the song on to 3 CD's max? That's ridiculous. I burn my playlists all the time with different songs, different order, etc. after a song is burned 3 times it's essentially useless.
2. limited downloads - from the site The number of allowable download and transfers to other computers owned by you and registered with the Site. - again ridiculous, so if I upgrade my computer 3 times, again I've lost my music.
I notice that the limits change from song to song, but after a certain point in time through the natural progression of technology user's are going to lose the use of any musci purchased on buymusic.com.
I have a feeling a lot of newbies will buy music here only to experience significant problems further down the road. Nice job buymusic.com... way to think about your customers and their satisfaction.
I do not want to obtain an OBSOLETE medium for my music. CD's are out. Why should I be restricted to one artist, one albumn, per medium? CD = 8-track-tape in my mind. I want all my music in one place (think iPod).
The technical pages of several CD manufacturers and trade associations, estimates vary widely as to the expected longevity of the media:
* CD-ROMs are estimated to last anywhere from 30 to 200 years.
* CD-Rs, before they are recorded, have an estimated shelf life of five to ten years.
* CD-Rs, after recording, are estimated to last between 70 and 200 years.
* CD-RWs are expected to last at least 30 years.
The average life span for today's hard drive (like the one in an iPod) is between three and five years.
The iPod will become obsolete well before most well kept CD collections do.
Yeah man, I am psyched!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hate that I can copy MP3s onto my MP3 player and back off onto another computer!!
I was using Mozilla and got the usual rejection notice from the buymusic.com site, so I fired up IE on the same machine just to look around. I'm using IE 5.5 and Media Player 9.0 on Windows 2000. Whenever I try to listen to clips or play any of their videos, Media Player attempts to play but immediately stops. The error message is:
"Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The file is either corrupt or the Player does not support the format you are trying to play."Microsoft stuff is such an irritation. It is not worth another minute of my time trying to figure out why it is broken. I came, I saw, It didn't work, I left.
...and Mozilla will be able to get in just fine.
Generally the intent of the architects is to include all potential customers so they dictate every browser under the sun will be included.
...) for IE and get it working really nice.
... sorry) that the site will be difficult to maintain if they don't redo the entire thing from scratch based on the prototype, and won't support all the platforms initially intended. Something about waterfall method of software engineering or whatever, heard about it from someone that attended college.
/. Flamewar ensues. Rinse. Repeat.
The coders prototype the site (did I say coders? damn, giving the html monkeys a little much credit, but still
The suits see the prototype, complete with full functionality and say 'ship it!' The bean counters tally up how much they are losing each day it doesn't ship, ignoring the fact that the entire thing is prototype (read : hacks and crap spagetti code and doesn't support anything but IE.)
Coders complain (damn, there I go again calling html monkeys coders
Manager ignores complaining monkeys and the site goes live.
Doesn't support other browsers. Post link to
-:-
Did I miss anything?
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
The reason is that your music files are wrapped in DRM encryption, which is unencrypted by the license that you download when you download the music file. The license download requires and Active-X control which is only compatible with Internet Explorer.
.wma file and some kind of license file which unlocks it. Why can't these two files can't just be downloaded without requiring an ActiveX control?
Translation: We hope that if we throw enough jargon at you, you'll just give up and go away.
From what I gather, the user ends up with a
"Painfully obvious"? Painfull? Does one usually talk up one's brand new offering and major technology partner in such glowing terms?
form action="http://www.buymusic.com\searchResults.aspx " method="get"
I'm using Safari, so I'm not sure if they intentionally just send me the dodgy code, or if it works with IE, but either way its bent...
1) you can buy anything they'll be selling through this service onnline.
2) CD's are not obsolete, however, if they where what does that have to do with this? if you can download the music, then you could rip it from the CD
3) again, go online and look. here's one, use the damn phone. call used music stores. hell, they would probably ship it to you and it would still be cheaper then 16 bucks.
4) SOme new CD's are, but that will be temporary. too many people heve the expectation that it will work in there computer. There will be backlash when those millions of peple who bought a computer oinstead of a stero can't use it to play music.
5) once you have rilloped the music from the CD, you can mix it.
You're whining for no good reason.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For instance, let's say they let an open source browser access the site and download the music. How are they to know that the browser will properly license the product? Isn't it at least possible that the code could be modified to bypass the protection. This is the cleverness of the Apple solution. The store is not accessed through the browser, but through a closed source controlled custom written interface. There are no complaints about browsers because it does not rely on browsers.
Which reminds us that IE is not really a browser. It is a front end for application servers. Part of it's functionality to browse the Internet, but increasingly it will be how customers interact with vendor specific application. And if you don't use windows, you don't do business.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Go to this link:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html
And tell them your a PC user interested in iTunes.
Hello, Thank you for writing to us. We apologize for any problems you have encountered with BuyMusic.com. We appreciate your comments and suggestions and will use them to help improve our products and services when making future decisions. Thanks again for your feedback. We appreciate your business. Sincerely, Team buy.com www.buy.com Original Message Follows: Order Number: Boy have you guys missed the boat here. The DRM nonsense will turn people right off, once they evenytually figure how they got ripped, and the Windows/IE specific site is just plain silly. Rethink DRM quickly (before iTunes appears for Windows), or become another dot com bust.
I'm all for the new choice in buying music as I am currently boycotting the RIAA because I refuse to feed the coffers of an entity out to sue the average joe into financial ruin but with the nazi-ish drm I won't buy into this service.
Give me the same fair use as I get with a non-copy protected cd and I will be a great customer.
Give me a buggy, drm-to-the-nine, proprietary format of which I can't do shit with and I will never be a customer.
Why is this so hard to comprehend? What ever company and/or labels chose to accept and move forward with mp3's that offer fair use will corner the market on the net.
The companies/labels that flood money into dev time trying to come up with an unhackable protection are only wasting time and money because there is no such thing as hack proof and they will never stop unauthorized copyright violations. Yes unauthorized copyright violations not stealing. Move forward and actually look at this in a business sense and not an old-school, protect my archaeic business model at all costs, vindictive, alienate the consumer tactic as we currently see.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
"Blum also called on the leaders of the music industry to work together to develop a standards organization like the ones in the computer industry to bring cohesion to the various music services."
He calls on leaders of another industry to work together to develop a standards body, yet his buy.com's offering deliberately requires Windows, WMP and IE, the last of which is notorious for NOT conforming to web standards?
Where is the supposed 300 000 tracks? I just went through all of the major categories listed on the main page of buymusic.com. Then I clicked on the List All option for each category. This is what I got:
Titles Within Alternative (11565 matching titles)
Titles Within Blues (3927 matching titles)
Titles Within Country (10597 matching titles)
Titles Within Jazz (22074 matching titles)
Titles Within Metal (4835 matching titles)
Titles Within New Age (1649 matching titles)
Titles Within Oldies (2151 matching titles)
Titles Within Pop/Rock (11557 matching titles)
Titles Within R&B/Soul (15457 matching titles)
Titles Within Rap/Hip Hop (12408 matching titles)
Titles Within Reggae (2138 matching titles)
Titles Within Soundtracks (333 matching titles)
Titles Within World (12794 matching titles)
Equals=111485
Those matching titles are referring to the actually track titles and not the albums since if you take the number of songs listed on the first page times the number of pages you can get the number of "matching titles". The only thing I can think of is that they have music just floating around without a category yet.
Anyone have any light to shed on this?
This is such a load. Why has everybody that's reporting on this story giving out so much misinformation?
Seriously. Especially the website where they "sell" the music. Check their legal disclaimer:
"All downloaded Content is sublicensed to End Users and not sold, notwithstanding use of the terms "sell," "purchase," "order," or "buy" on the Site or this Agreement."
Apparently "licensing" is the business model of the new millennium. Soon, nobody will be able to actually own _anything_ anymore. You'll just get a per-person license.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The commercials are funnier than Apple's but there is nothing funny about restrictive DRM.
SubLicenseMusic.com
Get Screwed
If your sound card has S/PDIF out and in, you could skip the DAC, 1/8" cable, and ADC parts of the process. Unless WMP somehow disables the digital outputs for DRM-protected files. Anyone know if that's the case?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
I'm just here to de-Fnord the idea that a developer needs to 'support' a given browser when developing a web site.
We're not talking platforms and APIs here, folks. They're spewing horseshit about everything other than the use of ActiveX (which is boneheaded in this context) and instead doing clumsy browser sniffing to keep it IE/Win exclusive.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
My number includes the songs that it says are "Not available for sale." To test this you can try out the Metal Catogory:
d =2 80&loc=18281
http://www.buymusic.com/searchresults.aspx?pari
Click on one of the results without a price and you will see its not available for sale but its still included in the "List All" listing. For Metal it says there is 194 pages * 25 songs per page = 4850, close to 4835 it mentions as the total (the last page is not full). This shows that they are even including songs that are not for sale, so the actual total number of songs for sale as of right now is even less then 100 000. Unless they are hiding somewhere else that I can't see?
Ok .. Booted up the Windows box to try this out. Got through the account signup, picked a tune. WTF? It's $.99? Oh well. That's advertising for you. Anyhow, add to basket, and checked out. Downloaded. Tried to play. Nothing.
Pain of the site list:
1. *Continuous* pop-ups on nearly every screen asking me to install WMP 9. I have it installed. It works just fine with everything else.
2. When trying to play my tune, WMP pops up IE and says I don't have a license, asks for my buymusic.com user and password. Entered, says it downloads a license.
3. Try to play (again.) Same deal, no license. Sends me back through the download again. Doesn't work.
4. Attempt to reinstall WMP 9 (obviously something is wrong with the installation.) Reinstalling is the Windows cure for everything!
5. Two reboots later. Download license. Whoops. Number of available "computer" licenses exceeded. I'm fucked.
6. Anyone want a copy of Clay Aiken singing Troubled Waters? I'll sell it cheap. $.79. DRM license not included. (Good for hackers!)
7. Post broken file on Kazaa. It's gotta be useful for someone, right?
If it makes scratchy sounds out the speaker, everybody (nearly) thinks its "nearly CD quality sound".
Then they'll tell you why (insert lossy compression here) is better than MP3.
As if sucking differently is better.
"I do not want to obtain an OBSOLETE medium for my music. "
.... ooops.... license ... your songs again.
Sonny boy, CD's will be playable long after you've sold your PC and realize the licenses may not transfer. Long after the next version of WMP is incompatible and you have to buy
Plus you pay more.
I can turn a CD into a crappy 128kb lossy DRM file with no problem. The reverse is impossible. Oh wait... you think they sound the same.
SO let me say a prayer for you...
"Dear jesus make this moron die. In thigh name we prey. Ahhh, men."
The other guy was right. You're pretty stupid. Thank heavens mommy cares for you right now.
WinAmp comes with a WMA plug-in, does this work for playing files downloaded from buymusic.com? If so, there's nothing stoping you from converting the music to any format you can find a WinAmp output plug-in for to strip the DRM from the file.
Centralization breaks the internet.
The stupid one button mouse. Even the OS supports 2 button mice properly, but they won't sell you one.
And yes, its a big deal, because you can't use their notebooks properly without an external mouse.
I've got to believe its because its dogma with them now; there's no rational reason not to include a 2nd mouse button.
Most of my reasons are outlined in this article. http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5052388.html?part=dh t&tag=ntop Buy.com should be ashamed!
Free speech is getting expensive...
You da man! +5 Flamebait! Wow!
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
is their slogan "get loaded". Does Buy.com want you to get drunk while downloading their music? Is that the only way that people will actually use this service?
SIGFAULT
Well thats why having files at different bitrates but charging more for higher quality files. If a service also offerred a lossless tracks for $2/track and 256kpbs for $1.50/track they would make more money in the long run with very little in the way of additional fixed costs. As far as WAVS are concerned, FLAC losless compression makes the transmission to broadband bearable by cutting the wav's filesize in half or more in many cases.
There is a review of the service at Clearstatic.
YOU FAIL IT!
-1 Flamebait. You lose.
Have you seen their ads?
Let's see now, they have people in front of plain white backgrounds singing (semi-badly) to songs they downloaded while listening to said songs on what is obviously a hard-drive-based music player.
Hmmmmm.... wonder where they got the inspiration for such ads.
Such originality!
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
It's variable bitrate, except for older stuff. At least from what I can tell anyway. I've only been a member for around 5 hours (thank you, BTW!). Long enough to fall in love with emusic.com. I grabbed some Django, some Frank Black, and a bunch of stuff I'd never heard before.
All the "older" stuff I've got so far (Billie Holiday, Arite Shaw, Django Reinhardt) is 128kbs. The "newer" stuff (The Future Sound Of London) is variable bitrate. Looks to be average like 190kbs.
I'm guessing anything that was mono to begin with is 128, anything else gets encoded VBR. They have a FAQ which helps some.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I'm a mac user and have purchased many tracks from the iTunes Music Store just for the simplicity and speed.. There really (as far as I know) isn't a KaZaa client for OSX..LimeWire on OSX (atleast on my little G4 iMAC) is total bloatware.
iTunes Music Store has taken off really well in the Apple community, therefore people are screaming and fighting trying to release some type of worthy competition.. problem is in the PC world, most people can fire up KaZaa or Morpheus(Gnutella) and download files just as easily..
BuyMusic.com in my opition is a sorry "HURRY UP AND BUY" type of system compared to the iTMS.
Apple apparently will be releasing a version of iTunes with support for the Music Store in the near future.
This really ticks me off, BuyMusic.com does not even have electronic music at all, i just searched through their pile of dung site, and it has absolutely no artists i find worthy. I will not spend my money on American Taste Dung Music; Pop, Hip Hop, Teeny Bopper music. I want to see some Trance, Deep House, DnB music, they has a serious lack of good music, i would not even recommend this site to any of my friends, due to this lack of good genre selection.
from my blog: Tonight I read about a new online music service called "BuyMusic.Com" for the first time. It is billed as a "iTunes for PC users" and this is a conspicuously empty niche in the music business at the moment. I've looked at other services such as Pressplay and MusicNet, but so far they have all sucked in terms of sound quality, value and ridiculous limitations on what you can do with the music that you legitimately purchase. Is BuyMusic any better? Let's find out. I found the link on the front page of Google news. It was attributed to an article from TechTV.com which comes off as both a commercial for the new service and a fairly harsh dig at Apple and iTunes. They make the point that the tracks are slightly less expensive at BuyMusic ($.79 as opposed to $.99) and the obvious problem that only people who own Macs are currently capable of accessing iTunes. They also make a big deal about the service's music catalog which stands at around 300,000 tracks. So I go to the BuyMusic site. The home page is fairly well designed, with top 100 singles and top album listings front and center. At first glance the selection is about what I would expect - Norah Jones is here, as well as Justin Timberlake, Shania Twain and 50 Cent. Okay, so it's not my favorite music but this is what sells so I can't blame them for putting it up front. The real test will come when I try to find some of my favorite music - in other words, something a music fan (as opposed to a 12 year old girl) might actually want to buy. There are some ads on the page, but nothing too intrusive. One is for Windows Media Player 9, which is interesting because it contains an implementation of Microsoft's latest Digital Rights Management technology. WMP9 is also notable for its very open-ended End User License Agreement (EULA) which means basically that if you install this software then you also give Microsoft the legal right to download and install updates to your computer at any time and without asking for your permission. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I just never liked the sound of that. I wonder if it is a required download to use the service. Yep. That makes the other ad somewhat ironic - it is for a Nomad 20GB MP3 Jukebox. Ironic because regular MP3s don't have any DRM built in and a good DRM system would probably prevent the user from transferring legitimately purchased music onto the player. I have yet to find out exactly what format of music this service is actually selling... Are they MP3s or Microsoft Media Player files or some other proprietary format like the one that Apple is using? Time to forge on and find out... So I begin to look around the page for the catalog navigation buttons. Off to the left is a list of genres... Looking down the list I notice that although there is a separate category for "Blues" there is no category at all for "Dance Music." Weh oh. Not a good sign. So I click on Pop/Rock which I figure is the closest thing to dance music they have listed here. Although it lists twenty-something variations on Pop/Rock such as "Teen Pop" and "Experimental Rock" there is still no indication of dance music. Scrolling down the page I do find an album I like however - John Mayer's "Room for Squares." The album price is listed as $12.69. Not too bad, I tell myself. Clicking onto the album info page I encounter my first harsh truth about BuyMusic: They don't have everything that's listed in their catalog. For example, even though the album price was given as $12.69, a note on the album's page says "For Sale as Individual Tracks Only." Furthermore, only four of the twelve tracks can be downloaded, for $.99 each. The first single
--- Wherever you go, everyone is always connected...
The parent should be modded all the way up to an article in and of itself. Buy.com is lying about the most basic stat, and the media is just buying it.
If your sound card has S/PDIF out and in
Then it will play silence. Windows Media Player's digital restrictions management infrastructure requires sound card drivers to turn off digital outputs when playing WMA files that demand analog output only.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I tried MP3 at 64 kbps mono, and it preserved the face on the Aphex Twin CD.
I use a similar technique to hide textual watermarks in recordings. The watermarks are somewhat hard to hear (because they hide in the wideband noise of the hi-hats), but they show up clearly in Cool Edit's spectral display. As long as you keep any action below 14000 Hz, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis will preserve the gist of the watermark. If you want a copy of my C program that generates a .wav file containing the text you type, send an e-mail to tepples (a) spamcop (o) net.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm not going to be using any digitial music service until they offer my a lossless version
MP3 is a data reduction method that loses some fidelity. So are WMA, AAC, and Ogg Vorbis. Downsampling from a 32-bit 192 kHz studio master to a 16-bit 44.1 kHz CD is also a data reduction method that loses some fidelity. So is amplifying the signal above 0 dBFS and intentionally clipping it. The term "CD quality" has been abused.
of the song.
If you just want a lossless version of the song, buy sheet music. You get all the notes, all the rhythms, all the lyrics, losslessly encoded in Western Common Practice Notation.
The proper term for what you're trying to say is "a version of the recording with equivalent fidelity to a well-mastered CD." Tests confirm that Ogg Vorbis is transparent to trained ears at 192 kbps. If you're worried about fitting more recordings on a portable player, the Vorbis specification includes a (not yet implemented) "bitrate peeling" feature that allows transcoding from a hi-fi file to a lo-fi file by operating entirely in the transform domain, which incurs less noise than decoding, re-modeling, and re-encoding.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Seen This?
Here's the response I got from their Customer Care system after a number of exchanges. Other content I've purchased from other Windows based services that use the MS DRM work fine on my Rio S10. This is terrible! ------------ Thank you for writing to us. We are responding regarding your order #16543022. We apologize if you have experienced trouble downloading your music to a digital media player or copying your music to a CD. Unfortunately, We are unable to provide technical assistance after you have downloaded the music from BuyMusic.com to your primary computer. In addition, we are unable to credit you back for failed or damaged copies once you have successfully downloaded the music to your primary computer. For assistance with downloading your BuyMusic.com selections to your digital media player or copying to a CD, we suggest that you contact the Technical Support Department of the manufacturer of your digital player or CD-R(W) drive. We apologize that we are unable to assist further with this issue. Thank you for your patience and understanding. If you have any additional questions, please contact us at support@customerservice.buymusic.com. We appreciate your business. Sincerely, BuyMusic.com www.BuyMusic.com
That sucks. One more reason not to use DRM-encumbered files. If I set up a PC in the living room to play music, I want to be able to use a S/PDIF to my receiver and use its (far superior to my sound card) DACs. Folks with USB speakers are probably left out in the cold too, since that's digital.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Folks with USB speakers are probably left out in the cold too, since that's digital.
But it's also encrypted. Digital outputs that have been encrypted such that the user cannot intercept cleartext are exempt from Secure Audio Path restriction.
Will I retire or break 10K?