Ok, I have yet to blog about the iTunes Music Store's first real competition, BuyMusic.com, mainly because I didn't want people to think that I was just attacking it for competing. This, in fact, would be completely false anyways. I am all for competition. Competition is what creates better product for us, the consumers (right?). The problem is that i don't consider BuyMusic.com competition for two reason.

1. iTMS works only for Os X (currently)
2. BuyMusic.com only works for Windows (for good)

There is one other reason that I don't think it's competition for the iTMS and that's really that it's a joke of a service. Every song has a different “rule” for how many times it can be burned/put on another computer/put on a portable player. And to find out the current tally of these numbers, you have to go online to their website, blegh. You have to use Microsoft Internet Explorer ONLY to download the songs (now you need it just to browse the site). The store reserves the right to share your personal information with whomever they like, thats right, not general info like age and localization, I'm talking REAL stuff like your address attached to your name. Personally Identifiable Information. They even have a sneaky 2 license scheme that isn't even spoken of in any of the “How To's” .

Well, beyond that stuff, I really dont' know how the store works. For all I know, its really user friendly, and works great. Its sad to say that it just doesn't. It really falls flat on its face. Scriptygoddess blogs about her experience with BuyMusic.com and the problems she talks about really aren't random, they are general complaints on how the whole service works.

First problem . After you buy an album, you need to download it. Sure, I knew that. What I didn't know is that you have to download EACH SONG INDIVIDUALLY. One click per song. With Two large sized albums with many songs on it - it can be just a LITTLE annoying.

Wow, for a service that is supposed to be an alternative to piracy, they sure have borrowed a lot from that phenomenon. 1.4 meg zips anyone?

Second problem . Before each song plays - it has to download and verify your license. You can't mulitple select a bunch and do this. You need to do this before EACH SONG will play. [Edited to add: “Verifing your license” means another window pops up that asks for your buymusic login and password… you enter it… it thinks awhile… it thinks some more… Then it comes back and says click “play” to actually play the song…]

Ugh, I could go on an on about this one.

Check out what she has to say, and see how user friendly her experience. I'm not here to knock it, just to point out what a poor attempt put together in mere months ends up as. It's really sad that this company thinks they have something, something that the iTMS doesn't. I mean, they must, if they think they can push ads mocking the iTMS.

We'll see how the critics rate them. From a lot of what I've read, its going to be ugly. And this is from Windows users not Os X users mind you.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2003 at 1:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.