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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!
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...
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????
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.
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!
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.
Guess that's one way to make sure that the site will stay up.
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.
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.
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?
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
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...
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.
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.
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.
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?
Take a look at this page:
http://www.cdburner.ca/digital-audio-formats-artic le/digital-audio-comparison.htm
You'll see that WMA files at 128k get a very high (95% quality) rating. The article suggests that this is perfectly fine (good) for pop music. In fact, if you look at the next page, you'll see that WMA is their recommendation for the average consumer/listener- at 128k.
128K WMA files sound very good. Not like that MP3 garbage- the files are smaller, and the quality is better.
No reason to lie.
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."
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
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
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.
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.
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 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?!?!?!?!?!?
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.
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?