That that, you smug Mac users

July 22, 2003 12:11 PM

BuyMusic.com debuts, a service that allows the 90-some-odd percent of people out there who use Windows to legally download music like their Mac-loving brethren have been able to do with iTunes. I went and used it today and give it an initial grade of "C": The music collection is adequate but could be larger and definitely needs indie artists, the UI is tolerable but needs improvement, and the music files themselves are generally okay but of inconsistent quality. One major problem I saw is that it listed -- and let people buy -- albums that they couldn't actually download: I had this happen with a Depeche Mode singles collection. Has anyone else used it yet? What are your thoughts? And notwithstanding the imminent Windows version of iTunes (which we are told will arrive by the end of the year), how long until this site has more real competition?
posted by jscalzi (36 comments total)

forget it ... only allows use from Windows platforms.
posted by bryanzera at 12:17 PM on July 22, 2003

I understand it puts limitations on it's files that iTunes does not. And inconsistantly at that. If I can't be sure if the songs will go on an iPod or CD, then it's nigh well useless.
posted by BigPicnic at 12:19 PM on July 22, 2003

Aside from it being IE only (*barf*), the other big showstopper in my mind is the fact that every song seems to come with a different set of restrictions on what you can and can't do with it. Some will let you burn to CDs no more than 3 times, or transfer to a portable player only 3 times, or no CD burning at all.

Also the prices for singles vary widely, but very few seem to actually cost the advertized $0.79, most seem to be $0.89 or $0.99.

Overall this site screams 'rushed', with them not taking the time to ensure consistency between labels the way the iTunes store has.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:21 PM on July 22, 2003

BigPicnic: It does put limitations in three categories: number of computers a file can be downloaded onto, the number of transfers to iPods or other digital players, and the number of times it can be burned to a CD. These do range from song to song, although with all the tracks I downloaded, all of them allowed unlimited transfers to digital players. All of this is disclosed when you're shopping, so it shouldn't be a surprise. iTunes has similar digital rights management on its files, so I'm not sure if this constitutes an effective difference between the two.
posted by jscalzi at 12:25 PM on July 22, 2003

"The music collection is adequate but could be larger and definitely needs indie artists..."

Give Emusic a try. They've got a large collection of artists from independent and smaller labels. Tracks and whole albums available as plain-vanilla MP3, no DRM restrictions, in 192 bitrate and VBR quality. Pay a monthly subscription rate and download as much as you want.

I'd be a loyal customer if they would accept my credit card, darnit. Where's the love?
posted by eyebeam at 12:26 PM on July 22, 2003

Yeesh. Reading through the legal and technical details over there... it's a bit of a mess, isn't it? If the other upcoming services (like Microsoft's) don't do a better job, Apple's gonna have a major cross-platform hit on its hands by year's end.

The iTunes Music Store has so much going for it - the smooth UI, the good quality AAC's, the easy, unobtrusive licensing arrangement... Assuming the Windows version is well-implemented, services like BuyMusic will have to improve quickly if they want to compete.
posted by adameft at 12:33 PM on July 22, 2003

a large collection of artists from independent and smaller labels

Whatever, hipster. I want my Clay Aiken.

;)
posted by scarabic at 12:34 PM on July 22, 2003

I second the vote for eMusic. Unlimited monthly downloads for a single price is what I'm looking for. Also, no DRM is embedded in the files - plain old MP3s.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 12:34 PM on July 22, 2003

I'm with eyebeam and monju bosatsu. emusic rocks! I've been a subscriber for almost two years, I think.
posted by dobbs at 12:39 PM on July 22, 2003

I decided to test emusic. So I tried searching for the last 10 album's I downloaded off of Kazaa. They didn't have even one. I'm not talking super-obscure stuff here, either: Thievery Corporation's "The Richest Man in Babylon", Miles Davis' "The Birth of the Cool", Boards of Canada's "Geogaddi", Amon Tobin's "Supermodified", some others. Couldn't find a single album, despite the fact that all of the above artists (plus others) are in their catalog.

I might want to say that they don't list new stuff, except for the fact that they're missing one of Miles Davis' seminal records. What's the deal?
posted by gd779 at 12:51 PM on July 22, 2003

iTunes has a consistant, easy to use interface. It has consistant rights for every single song. It has high quality rips. It doesn't require you to open a web browser. It doesn't use an overly proprietary codec. It automatically does everything you need it to do with no effort on your part.

Basically, it does everything BuyMusic doesn't, and Mac users are happy for that. And soon enough, Windows users will be, as well.
posted by benjh at 12:58 PM on July 22, 2003

benjh makes a good point. iTunes is supposed to be coming to Windows soon, and when it does, it's going to be big. The only player I can see competing with that is Amazon, and they'd better get off their asses if they want to have a chance.

gd779: The lack of certain albums has to do with the labels that eMusic has current deals with. If you look at the labels releasing Miles Davis's albums, for example, you'll see that almost all of them are released by Sony. "Birth of Cool" is the only one released by Blue Note Records, which for whatever reason eMusic presumably doesn't have a deal with. They're supposed to be increasing the number of labels they work with all the time, though.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:03 PM on July 22, 2003

I'm really quite baffled by the "Internet Explorer Only" limitation of this site. I didn't think any business was dumb enough for that these days. Just for kicks I tried to validate their HTML code at validator.w3.org - it doesn't validate as anything. There's no DOCTYPE declaration, and when you try validating by overriding with any DOCTYPE it doesn't work with any of them.

I can't think of any excuse for locking out Netscape/Mozilla users. I don't see anything going on at the site that Netscape/Mozilla can't handle. Maybe they'd choke on all the coding errors.
posted by dnash at 1:11 PM on July 22, 2003

iTunes has similar digital rights management on its files

Well, they both have DRM, but there are a lot of differences, as others have pointed out. For me, any DRM is a non-starter.
posted by squirrel at 1:11 PM on July 22, 2003

I can't think of any excuse for locking out Netscape/Mozilla users. I don't see anything going on at the site that Netscape/Mozilla can't handle. Maybe they'd choke on all the coding errors.

Mozilla usually handles errors *better* than IE, so I'm not sure what their damage is. In fact, I bet if you spoofed the browser id you'd cruise right in with no problem.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:15 PM on July 22, 2003

The lack of certain albums has to do with the labels that eMusic has current deals with.

That's what I would have thought, except that emusic has Thievery Corporation's The Mirror Conspiracy, released by ESL, but it doesn't have Thievery Corporation's The Richest Man in Babylon, also released by ESL. Whatever, you larger point is probably right - it's probably mostly about the labels.
posted by gd779 at 1:24 PM on July 22, 2003

monju_bosatu: Actually, I can't get in with mozilla by sending a fake user agent identification. Anybody have any idea how they ID the browser without looking at the UA?
posted by mr_roboto at 1:27 PM on July 22, 2003

jscalzi - Again, it's my understanding, but I think iTunes song rights are all the same, and generally better than theres. I could be wrong.
posted by BigPicnic at 1:33 PM on July 22, 2003

Boy these commericals seem familiar to another music service.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 1:43 PM on July 22, 2003

The buy.com site uses Windows Media Player to manage DRM so that is why it is persnickety about the browser.

I've been using Rhapsody for a few weeks [$4.95/mt w/0.79 burns]. I love the on-demand streaming where I can listen to many album as often as I like. And then burn individual songs to CD if I want to. Frankly music samplers and internet radio is what I've listened to most. Sometimes I don't need to download the whole song/album to realize it sucks. It is like a giant listening booth with 300,000 songs on it.

I'll play with iTunes when it comes to Windows.
posted by birdherder at 1:50 PM on July 22, 2003

jscalzi: iTunes has similar digital rights management on its files, so I'm not sure if this constitutes an effective difference between the two.

It does constitute a very effective difference - the restrictions on every single file purchased from the iTunes store is exactly the same. You, the purchaser, don't have to "keep track" of what you can do with it later, the way you apparently would with this new service.
posted by JollyWanker at 1:50 PM on July 22, 2003

For me, any DRM is a non-starter.

There's the way it ought to be, and there's the way it is. I agree with the sentiment that you should be able to do anything you want with music you purchase, but it's politically impossible for that to happen. Apple's solution, which is fair and unobstrusive in my opinion, is as close as we're going to get to DRM-free.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:56 PM on July 22, 2003

Apple's solution, which is fair and unobstrusive in my opinion, is as close as we're going to get to DRM-free.

My impression might be wrong, but.... It's my impression that Apple's solution allows you to burn standard audio CDs of whatever you download. If you can get it in audio CD format, you can get it into whichever format you prefer, and do anything with it; it's effectively DRM free. Isn't it?
posted by mr_roboto at 2:01 PM on July 22, 2003

Mr_roboto: Are you sure you've spoofed your entire useragent string? Many browsers that offer the option to switch are still identifiable by the bit between brackets. If that's not it they're probably identifiying the browser with a piece of javascript, to which certain variables and functions are exposed which can be used to determine the browser.

Though just for the record, I wouldn't be surprised at all if mozilla didn't work, I've seen too many websites using very strictly windows-only activex cludges...
posted by fvw at 2:01 PM on July 22, 2003

Thanks, fvw: I turned Javascript off and got in with Mozilla (spoofing the user agent as IE 6.0 WinXP). It's kind of anticlimactic, especially since I can't search or listen to anything with Javascript off.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:12 PM on July 22, 2003

mr_roboto.

you can download an mp4/aac from the apple music store and burn it to a CD. You can then import the CD as mp3's with no DRM. Some think that this kills the quality of the file - but I have been listening to music all my life and it sure beats fourth generation dupes of Black Flag.
posted by grimley at 2:18 PM on July 22, 2003

I'm another very happy EMusic customer. As long as you go into it knowing you'll still probably need to supplement your music listening habits elsewhere, at least a little bit. But for the price of less then one album a month you really can't go wrong. The best part is the site is totally open so you can go searching all you want on any browser and any platform and line up a few labels or albums before you sign up. And theres also plenty of posts in their msg boards too that one can poke around and see what people are griping about before joining.

I think their free trial is something like 15days or 50tracks... that alone would cost you $50 at the Apple Store or $40 at BuyMusic.
posted by 10sball at 2:36 PM on July 22, 2003

Opera gets in when IDed as MSIE 5.0. I haven't downloaded anything though.
posted by TimeFactor at 3:08 PM on July 22, 2003

mr_roboto: with iTunes, you can only burn the same playlist/CD 10 times, and you can only copy the file to something like two different computers. So there are limitations, but brought enough for most people's needs.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:58 PM on July 22, 2003

birdherder --

I am also a Rhapsody fan. Without going off-topic too much, where did you go to get the $4.95/mo plan? I am paying $9.95/mo which I still feel is worth it for as much use as I get at work and at home.
posted by aaronchristy at 6:49 PM on July 22, 2003

What I can't get my head around is the way the buymusic is classifying their music.

Since when is pink floyds' relics "alternative".
It's classic rock.

Oh wait. THey don't have a classic rock section.

They don't *have* a techno section.

What a bunch of retards.

I did a search for Metallica and found a couple of biographies....how strange.
posted by jaded at 7:28 PM on July 22, 2003

Microsofts study of Kazaa doesn't seem to be paying off.
posted by lightweight at 12:40 AM on July 23, 2003

Using Linux, I can get into the BuyMusic site with Opera, without user agent spoofing, and with Javacript turned on. The only problem is that it demands Windows Media Player 9 to download anything. I think WMP9 runs under Linux with the Crossover plug in, but I haven't got that, so I can't test whether the site would work or not.

Of course, WMP9 is required because of the DRM. Screw that. Mplayer is perfectly capable of playing WMA and QT these days.

Emusic looks interesting. It certainly won't have anything like the range I'm used to from Kazaa, but I do feel an obligation to support a site which offers legal downloads for a reasonable price with no DRM attached.
posted by salmacis at 2:08 AM on July 23, 2003

DRM? Yawn. So how long will it be before this is cited as another example of why online music distribution doesn't work?

I will never, ever buy music which restricts how I listen to it, whether it's enforced through DRM, copy-protected CDs, or electric shock therapy and bamboo under the fingernails. It's simply not fit for purpose. Who would want to buy a CD that wouldn't work in any other player but the one in the living room? Stupids.
posted by walrus at 4:21 AM on July 23, 2003

But I did just join emusic for a free trial, so that's ok.
posted by walrus at 4:47 AM on July 23, 2003

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. Sigh ...
posted by seanyboy at 8:08 AM on July 23, 2003