July 28, 2003A BuyMusic.com RantInstead of re-capping our wonderful hot weekend at the show, I thought I'd take this opportunity to shine some light on the fine folks over at BuyMusic.com. (feel the sarcasm?) As many of you know, a few months ago, Apple rolled out their music download service, a legitamite way for you to download the songs that you want for a small fee - usually $.99 each or $9.99 per album. Not a bad deal, considering you know you're going to get a good quality version of the song, and, hey! it's legal. My couple of experiences with the iTunes Music Store have been pretty good. You find the song, you click one button to download (it's so easy it's kinda scary) and in a few seconds, you're listening to your new purchase. OK, so the fine folks at Buy.com announced a few weeks after Apple intro-ed their new service that they, too wanted to begin a similar service. I thought, "Great, competition. Some competition will probably do Apple some good in this market. More competition = lower prices." So a week ago today, Buy.com rolled out their new music download service. It's called BuyMusic.com and you've probably already seen the ads on TV for it. If you haven't seen their ads, go take a look (bottom of the page) and then come back. Ok, now go take a look at Apple's music ads that they came out with back in February. See any similarities? I just don't understand why a company would make TV ads that are such a blatant ripoff of another company's ads. I mean, you don't see the other beer companies doing the Budweiser "Whassup??!!" thing in their ads, do you? No! They have their own creative teams that come up with their OWN ORIGINAL IDEAS. I look forward to Apple legal coming down on them. Ok, so nevermind the fact that they can't come up with original ideas for advertising. Let's move on to the site. Interestingly enough, it looks strikingly familiar. In fact, it looks very similar to the way that the iTunes Music store looks. Amazing! Let's move on to the music. The advertising states that songs can be downloaded starting at $.79 each. I went on there Monday afternoon and surfed around for a while, checking it out. Where are these $.79 songs?? In my quick browse through popular music, I found MAYBE 1 or 2 songs that sold for $.79. The rest were between $.99 and $1.19 each. Ok, so what about file format? I mean, you could download these songs, and transfer them to your iPod (for Windows or Mac), right? Umm, no. The songs you download from the BuyMusic.com service are in WMA format. And licensing isn't the same for all songs. Some songs can legally be transferred to other computers. Some songs can't. Some songs can be burned to a CD 3 times. Some can be burned 10 times. It varies from song to song. We,, what about downloading the songs? Is it easy? Well, not according to this person, who had a horrible experience with the entire process of downloading and burning an album of music. But most appalling of all is that late in the week BuyMusic.com began blocking any users who don't use Internet Explorer on a Windows-based PC. Yep, that's right. So, if you're using Mozilla, Camino, Opera, or any Mac or Linux-based browser, you aren't allowed to use their site. Yup. If they were only blocking Mac users, they'd be missing out on approximately 5% of their potential market. But they're blocking ANY browser that's not IE on a PC. Ridiculous. And why? Nobody knows. If you disable JavaScript (so their code can't check your browser), you can browse the site just as anybody else can. Ok, and the last thing. The whole operation seems like it was put together very quickly and hap-hazardly. For example, here's a couple of quotes taken directly from the "Company Info" page on the site: "...your music downloads have their own DRM license so you can enjoy your music whether or not your logged on to the internet." "With over this many songs and these great products in one convenient, easy-to-use site, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for at BuyMusic.com." Uhh..Did a 5 year old write this stuff? Don't you people have proofreaders?" The good news is: Apple is working on a version of iTunes for Windows right now, and will be released by the end of the year. And then everyone can enjoy easy, pain-free music downloads and burning. Ok, rant is over. Thanks for letting me get that out. Happy Monday! Posted by Jeff at July 28, 2003 10:26 AMComments
I checked out buymusic.com the second I first heard about it. It was in a buy.com catalog I believe. I was looking forward to seeing what they had to offer. Recall that Apple's iTunes Music Store isn't available for PC users, even those with iPods, since the site works with iTunes, a strictly Mac application. I was hoping this would be different. So anyhow, the first thing I saw was... nothing. The announcement read that I had an incompatible browser and that the site only worked with IE 5.5. Umm, are you kidding me? Incompatible? Like Mozilla? The engine Netscape is built upon? Umm, yea. okay. I was already at my make-it-or-break-it point, but opened IE to check it out anyhow. I read the FAQ to get more info on the buymusic store. not MP3 format, eh? So I'd be paying for a proprietary file? Doesn't work with iPod, eh? So this is essentially worthless to me. I see. I closed the browser. This must have been a few days ago, and reading your entry totally brought it all back to me. So who's going to look out for the PC users with iPods who wish to be a bit more legit? No one? Fine. I'll keep stealing. Posted by: Brian at July 28, 2003 11:01 AMRock on, Mr Korte. :) Posted by: The Author at July 28, 2003 11:14 AMJeff, Have you ever seen a Dodge Shadow do a Burn Out?:) Posted by: D at July 28, 2003 11:56 AMI thought the buymusic commercial was pretty cool. Like that fat chick rapping... damn, I'd love to get a piece of that. Posted by: Paul at July 28, 2003 12:46 PMHopefully buymusic.com will improve their services...I'm a little wary of dowloading mp3s with all the lawsuits out there right now (not that I've downloaded very many, but still)... Posted by: Lauren at July 28, 2003 05:25 PMPost a comment
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