More bad news for BuyMusic.com


I know, you're sick of hearing me complain about these guys, but here are some more choice complaints from users and musicians.

A lengthy article of complaints from a Windows 2000 user who has bought tracks from BuyMusic.com enumerates the following problems:

  1. You must download each track in an album individually. Unlike Pressplay, Apple's iTunes Music Service, and Rhapsody, there is no client to handle interaction with the server. Hence, you will need to click on each song individually in order to download the song, and there is no download acknowledgment from the browser to guarantee that the data was actually received (an issue if your download never completes correctly or your machine crashes before the local disk cache can be flushed).
  2. After each track is downloaded, you must again individually click on each song to validate your license (and thereby lock it to your computer). There are many problems with this, including the inconvenience of needing to click on every song, and the possibility of not being able to use a song you just downloaded if your network connection goes away. Let's assume that you downloaded 10 tracks and only verified 8 (because you got distracted), you now can't play or burn the additional two because you're sitting somewhere that your laptop can't get connectivity.
  3. Windows 2000 burning requires a plug-in from Roxio that appears not to be very stable. This problem shouldn't exist under XP, since that environment has burning built into its services.
  4. The first license that you activate is considered "special" and, as such, is the only one that can be used for transfers and CD burning. In this example, the user wanted to move their track to an XP machine so that they could burn a CD. Unfortunately, that won't work with the DRM being used by BuyMusic, because there doesn't appear to be a way to de-authorize one machine and reauthorize another (as their is in the iTunes DRM).

Ripping off the artist

An series of pieces posted by Jody Whitesides, an artist whose music is being sold by BuyMusic.com. He claims that he was not consulted by The Orchard before his music was sold on BuyMusic.com and that they did not have rights to sell it electronically. The debate is ongoing and lawyers are now involved.

Adding insult to injury

Just to add insult to injury, somebody has put up a site, DontBuyMusic.com that certainly has a different bent.