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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."
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."
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
I have taken an AAC encoded file on Mac (not one downloaded from the iTMS) and moved it to a PC and used WinAMP to play it.. To get it play in WinAMP, I needed to change the extension to .MP4 or .AAC and then it plays. But it does not display any of the tag information, and no cover art.
Having said that, I find the iTunes experience MUCH better than WinAMP. If you get iTunes for Windows, I would tend to think that won't want to use WinAMP anymore, since iTunes does it all.
Minimum System Requirements
Downloading Music from BuyMusic.com to Your Computer
See Manufacturer Contact Information for support information.
Pentium Class PC computer. Our music downloads are not compatible with any Mac OS. Pentium class is required for individualization settings to enable music licenses. Internet browser - Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 or newer. Note: If you browse the site with Netscape you cannot purchase and download music. Windows Media Player 9.0 or newer. Note: Windows Media Player version 9.0 or newer is compatible with the DRM encrypted music files BuyMusic.com sells. Other players might not be compatible and might not play, transfer, or burn your music files satisfactorily. Media Player is a free download. (See Manufacturer Contact Information for free download.) Operating System - Microsoft Windows® 98 Second Edition, Windows 2000, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows XP Home Edition, or Windows XP Professional. BuyMusic downloads are not compatible with any Mac OS. Processor - 233 megahertz (MHz) processor, such as an Intel Pentium II or Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processor
Just turn of JavaScript ... then you can use any browser.
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.
And here is their reply
Hello,
Thank you for writing to us.
We are responding to your request for information about browser
compatibility.
We apologize for any inconvenience, but unfortunately, our music
downloads are only compatible with Internet Explorer. Your browser must
be Internet Explorer. If you browse the site with Netscape, or any
browser other than Internet Explorer, you cannot purchase and download
music. The reason is that your music files are wrapped in SDMI
encryption, which is unencrypted by the license that you download when
you download the music file. The license download requires an Active-X
control, which is only compatible with Internet Explorer. Without it you
cannot download your license and your music stays encrypted and
unusable.
Again, we apologize for any inconvenience.
If you have further questions, please contact us at
support@customerservice.buymusic.com.
We appreciate your business.
Sincerely,
BuyMusic.com
www.BuyMusic.com
Original Message Follows:
Most of the tracks I've seen allow 3 or 5 burns to CD. Some say unlimited, but I've yet to see any tracks (that are even available) that didn't allow burning. I'm not denying that there aren't some there, I just haven't seen them.
Though, good luck with it. We downloaded one here at work, and the Roxio plugin to MediaPlayer just hangs. Who knows why. It's popular to blame MS, but after what I saw happen to EZCD creator over the years, I'd bet there's some crappy Roxio software in there as well.
So, to sum it up. I've seen a lot of tracks that will allow you to burn them, but whether you're successful or not is still in question.
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
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
Compare their computer sales, to their song sales. Which do you think is more important to them?
Probably both. At 6.5 million songs sold, iTunesMS is probably not just the most successful online music venture, but also the most successful internet venture in history.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Sorry, here is the e-mail.
support@customerservice.buymusic.com
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