BuyMusic.com launches Windows answer to iTunes

gekko · 07-23-2003, 02:56 PM

Quote:

BuyMusic.com launches Windows answer to iTunes
By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
July 23, 2003 8:20 am ET

Windows users now have a place to go for legal music downloads.

Scott Blum, the owner of online retailer Buy.com Inc., on Tuesday launched a new online music service called BuyMusic.com, which his company is billing as "the world's largest legal music download store."

The announcement was made at a media event held in New York's Times Square.

The service will offer about 300,000 tracks from five major record labels and thousands of independent labels. The songs will cost between US$0.79 and $1.29 per track. Albums will start at $7.95 and go to approximately $12, a company spokeswoman said.

Music will be available to Windows Media Player version 9.0 users and will come in the digital rights management-friendly Windows Media Audio format, an alternative to the more popular MP3 file format that cannot be used for peer-to-peer file sharing on services such as Kazaa or Morpheus.

BuyMusic.com comes nearly three months after Apple Computer Inc.'s launch of its popular iTunes Music Store, which is averaging 100,000 downloads per day, according to Apple.

However, until Tuesday, no similar service had been available for Windows users.

"The race has been on, since iTunes was launched, to produce a similar service for the Windows market," said Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst with Forrester Research Inc. A dozen more such services will pop up over the next year, he predicted, including offerings from America Online Inc., Roxio Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Internet service.

Because it has a variety of different download options -- for example, some files offer free streaming of a portion of the song and some do not -- BuyMusic.com is more complex than Apple's iTunes, Bernoff said. "But it's still significant in that it's the first Windows-based service that does not require a subscription," he said.

Umm... I don't know where to start. They use Windows Media Audio? WTF are they thinking? They opt to use a non-standards based format instead of MPEG? Not too bad, considering this is designed only for Windows users. Well... except that these songs aren't supported by iPod, the best MP3 player on the market! You also won't be able to make MP3 CDs from them, which can be great if your car stereo supports MP3 CDs.

Next problem, the only big selling point I see is that songs start at $.79, too bad pretty much every song is still $.99. And some files have streams and others don't? Well that's helpful!

Once again, Apple does it first, and Apple does it best.

Null · 07-23-2003, 03:23 PM

this is like the 4th site for windows users. and prolly the worst of them all. hardly the answer to anything.

they have others that do mp3 format for 79cent and some for 99cent

GameMaster · 07-23-2003, 03:27 PM

Ho hum

Apple offers every song at 50 cents.

Why don't they save themselves some time and money and just shut down the store, lol.

gekko · 07-23-2003, 03:45 PM

Try 99 cents.

Crono · 07-23-2003, 05:34 PM

Hmmm... you know, I'd rather not pay money for my music. And I couldn't care less what record companies think.

Even with these legal music download programs, the majority of people will still be getting their music free from other programs. Kind of useless, and a waste of time.

Null · 07-23-2003, 05:52 PM

its a start. wont be the answer. but a start.

i personally would be all over a legal way that has a MONTHLY payment instead of a payment per song.

one dallar a song. have a thousand songs costing a thousand dollars. i just dont like that.

id rather have it more like an internet charge. pay so much get as much as you want. :P

gekko · 07-23-2003, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crono

Hmmm... you know, I'd rather not pay money for my music. And I couldn't care less what record companies think.

I'd rather not pay for my car, or insurance, or computer, or food, or movies, or games, or electricity. You have one year before you need to enter into the real world. In the real world, if you want something, you have to work for it. Nothing comes free. You won't go anywhere in life if you expected things to be given to you. Just my advice, take it or leave it. Oh, and my suggestion to help you, radio.

And to Null, the problem is your monthly fee needs to pay for the service, and be split among many different record companies, who want their share. Let's say I'm a big Madonna fan, and I purchase her songs. The money would go to Maverick records, as it should. Now if I payed a monthly fee, and I listened mostly to Madonna, the money would be split between many different record companies. I don't think Maverick would be happy that other companies are making money off their album.

Most people who have 1,000 songs did not download them all. They are made up mostly from CDs that they own, and probably for many years. I don't think many people would really be downloading a thousand songs.

Null · 07-23-2003, 06:26 PM

you'd be very surprised then to find out how many ppl actually download. i had known ppl from old clans in Q3 that had near 10,000 all downloaded.

i had known ppl who set it to download a couple hundred a night. while they slept.

i used to download a fair amount

altho i dont anymore. i find it easier to visit my friends house. who has walls and walls of CD's they've bought. they litteratly have thousands of CD's countless songs

[edit]
And this war the RIAA is fighting has all been done before. over and over. everytime something new comes out theres ppl to fight it.

radio, cassette tapes, cd's, CD Burners. multiple phones in home off single phone line. multiple tv's over sigle cable connection.

the future will move on no matter how they fight it. you learn to adapt or you go crazy like the RIAA is.

gekko · 07-23-2003, 06:28 PM

RIAA's prime targets

Null · 07-23-2003, 06:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gekko

RIAA's prime targets

im sure they are too. But i have no longer any contact with thoes ppl so i dunno what they do anymore. most of them were in college universities when they were doing that so *shug*

GameMaster · 07-23-2003, 06:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gekko

Try 99 cents.

That's funny, I could've sworm I pressed "99", this keypad must be busted.

gekko · 07-23-2003, 06:38 PM

Sure. I think we know what the problem is

Seven7 · 07-23-2003, 09:12 PM

bleeping BuyMusic.com blocks Mozilla Firebird and recomends me to download "IE" AKA Integrated Evil in order to see their site. The main page however didn't block my Opera 7.20beta browser though.

*shakes fist*

GameMaster · 07-23-2003, 09:31 PM

So use IE, what's the big deal?

As long as you don't permenant with it

Seven7 · 07-23-2003, 10:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GameMaster

So use IE, what's the big deal?

As long as you don't permenant with it

*Sighs* I'm not that desperate GameMaster, to use IE 5.5

I have not tried it yet but there is a extension or two that can change useragent so you can trick the site in thinking that you are using IE, but the downside is that it defeats the purpose of Evangelism.

adds BuyMusic.com to my list of sites for Evangelism.