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Technical Glitches Plague BuyMusic.com
An anonymous reader submits: "Despite its much larger target market, BuyMusic.com does not seem to be the runaway success that Apple's iTunes Music Store was. USA Today is reporting that customers have experienced technical glitches that prevent them from playing their purchases. Another customer reports that the BuyMusic tech support does little more than say 'Sorry, but that's YOUR problem.' Finally, a musician whose music is for sale at BuyMusic questions the legality of BuyMusic's catalog." Scriptygoddess's account of her unhappy experience is mirrored here.
So there goes any chance of me using their service.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
The plugin they say to use on their site. She did everything the site asks, and it sucked.
This is why iTunes is so great. You can buy your music, play it, transfer it to an iPod, burn it, etc without downloading updates/patches/plugins for a bunch of different pieces of software from different companies. (Well you have to update iTunes to iTunes 4, but it's hardly the same)
The other issue getting in the way here is the shitty DRM. Only one computer can do the burning, so since it didn't work for her Windows 2000 box, she tried moving it to Windows XP (thinking it might improve some how). But she couldn't burn from Windows XP. Furthermore, every song had to be "authorized", (she types in username/password), and cannot be done in batches, even in album format.
It's not as elegant as iTunes, and that's the issue.
From reading what she wrote, it looks like BuyMusic specificy a Windows Media Player plugin by Roxio as the only way you can burn CDs from it.
I'm guessing it has to be a WMP plugin so that WMP can validate the license on the music.
I think she had a pretty fair point, they tell you that you are allowed to burn a CD from the music, and they tell you the software that you must use to do it. The software doesn't work, they tell you it's not their problem - I'd be pissed off too.
Advanced users are users too!
Why are we gloating over the problems of buymusic.com?
Because, as nerds, we want the original and well-designed service (Apple Music Store) to thrive, instead of the half-assed ripoff (BuyMusic).
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
I apologize for posting this is Code, but stupid Slashdot thought the original had "too many junk characters" even though it was almost all text!
/ 1510211&mode=thread">here</a> - which someone else linked to as well.
The full discussion is <a href="http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/29
There was an interesting post related to your question that noted the current Orchard terms:
<b>You grant to us throughout the Territory during the Sales Period the NON-EXCLUSIVE rights to sell, copy, sublicense, distribute and otherwise exploit any and all of your Recordings by any and all means and media (whether now known or existing in the future), including, without
limitation, the non-exclusive rights to sell, distribute and otherwise exploit any and all of your Recordings throughout E-Stores including, but not limited to, those via the Internet, as well as all digital storage, download and transmission rights, whether now known or existing in the
future.</b>
Jody's response:
<i>
That clause that you refer to in their contract was not worded like that in the original agreement. The concept of digital downloads for pay did not not exist. End of story.
As of right now, they have yet to provide a document with my signature on it stating I ever signed such a paper.
So while I agree that any dope who would sign such a contract deserves this, I didn't and I'm mad as hell. </i>
So while we still don't have the exact wording of the original contract, I'd have to say he has good cause to be angry, though really Orchard is at fault.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...and I mean "funny" in the "does this milk taste funny?" sense. And maybe the other way, too.
I noticed on a random search of favorite artists on their site that they had a complete version of The Beach Boys "Hawthorne, CA" 2 CD set. I looked up the listing, and the complete album download is $39.29. That struck me as kind of steep for some reason, so I double checked, and the CD set (with all the liner notes, packaging, etc.) lists for $26.98. That's a bit of a jump in price, considering you're getting LESS for your money from BuyMusic.
FWIW, the individual tracks ARE available for 99c each, which can be a good thing, except when the price is also applied to link tracks that run as short as 15 seconds. Really thoughtful on their part.
--DocL
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If it wasn't for half of the people in this country, the other half would be all of them -- Col. Stoopnagle
"we may disclose, sell, trade, or rent your Personally Identifiable Information to others without your consent"
Privacy? What Privacy?
___ alwaysBETA.com - Hey, you've got nothing better to do.
These 80's compilations must have made their dough, because they are 79 cents.
If only they would release a linux version of ANYTHING. I'm sick of the hypocrisy from them. They want everyone to code to their OS with it's skimpy little marketshare but they wont do the same in kind for other OS's with skimpy little marketshares. Instead they port stuff half assed over to windows. If Apple would just form an alliance with other OS makers and form a strategy they could gang up on MS and make some headway, but noooooooooooo. Steve wants to have his cake and eat it too.
.doc from Word. Face it, Apple will only port stuff to a non-Apple OS when it makes business sense. Quicktime did, and now iTMS does. Once they have iTMS for Windows and Mac, that will cover pretty much anyone who would buy music online. I've met very few people that don't dual boot Linux, either on the x86 or the ppc side. I guess Apple just figures that such a small market isn't worth the dev time. Get over it.
What hypocrisy? I never read a state from Apple claiming to be the champion of every small-marketshare OS out there. They are in the business of making money, most of which is made by them from selling Macs, not software. Of course they want people to code for OS X. Running OS X is a major selling point of Mac hardware. Compare the number of Linux Macs that Terrasoft sells to the total number of Macs sold. I'm sure the figures are statistically insignificant to Apple's bottom line.
As for "half assed" Windows ports, what are you referring to? The only app I know ported to Windows is Quicktime. I have no idea how well it works on Windows, but I'm sure the reason Apple did it was to make sure that the Windows Media format didn't become a de facto standard like
If you're into indie stuff, then emusic looks like quite a bargain. Something around $15 a month for unlimited MP3 downloads. This sounds like a win-win situation, at least for me. I'm planning on subscribing this week.
Don't like indie? Get a Mac or just pay tower records the $18 they want for the new Britney.
At least there are *some* choices today that weren't here just a year ago.
I can get Moby's two CDs, both with 18 pretty large tracks, for $9.99 each. And it comes with cover art.
Apple prices full CDs at $9.99. You don't have to buy a-la-carte if you don't want to.
KaZaA Lite is the best to get MP3s, porn and popular software quickly.
eMule (eDonkey network) is the best to get movies, games and software reliably, as well as full albums, ebooks and porn.
What Gnutella is good for, I don't know.
Direct Connect ++ is best to get stuff if you have a very fast connection.
BitTorrent is best to get fresh movie, anime and other releases and some legit stuff like game demos.
FreeNet is not really usefull as of today.
IRC is good to get fresh movie and software releases quickly.
Usenet is good to get fresh stuff quickly if your ISP has a good newsserver or you are willing to subscribe to a paid one, but it's bad for hunting down specific stuff.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I know what you mean.... in my school's sci-fi club, we get to watch movies on some of the projectors that the school owns. Unfortunately, the high-quality professional-grade amplifiers the school gets don't understand macrovision (since they're not for home entertainment but specifically for rack-mounted systems), so any time we watch a DVD the picture fades in and out and the audio goes haywire.
And before you go and say that a public re-broadcast is exactly what they're trying to prevent, it's closed to members only, making it a private showing (like if you watched with a bunch of your friends). The only difference is that we get to borrow some of the school's swank viewing equipment.
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
I hear you.
Firstly, for those who don't know (and yes there are many who don't know even on slashdot,) macrovision is a (very poorly implemented and easily bypassed with the right gear) anti-copying technology the causes the picture to get darker and brighter all the time. On analogue media they play around with the luminance signal and on DVD it's just a macrovision bit that they turn on. You can get macrovision filters to clean this sort of thing up.
The last time I tried to use my iBook as a DVD player using the composite jack on an external TV, the same thing happenned. The Apple DVD player sent a macrovision signal out with the composite signal. Fortunately I happenned to have VLC which allowed me to properly play the DVD that I had bought within my own rights.
Alas, stories like this are considered by the industry to be collateral damage.
All I know is this:
1. iTunes Music Service worked the first time and every time after this. Through an OS reinstallation, across three computers, and countless CD burns, it has *always* worked and never restricted me.
2. BuyMusic.com failed the very first time I used it. I still can't play my song (who knows why?) After several suggested reinstalls of WMP9 and subsequent "re-authorizations" of the tune, it now says my maximum auth count was reached. Fortunately it was only $.79. But I'm never going back. What a piss-poor POS that thing is.