BuyMusic.com ceo Scott Blum says his new music site, launched yesterday in New York's Times Square, is the world's largest legal music download store.

Aimed directly at the 150,000,000 pc users in the US, it's 'powered' by Micro$oft technology Windows Media 9 Series and Micro$oft.NET framework and at the moment, offers access to around 300,000 tracks.

Individual songs will go for 79 cents and albums, from $7.95 from the top five record labels and, "thousands of independent labels".

"The recording industry is behind us 100 percent," trumpets Blum, a statement echoed not only by various record label suitspeople, but also by RIAA president Cary Sherman who says, "This is what our multi-pronged campaign against illegal file sharing is all about – creating viable opportunities for new and existing legitimate services to grow and thrive in a dynamic online music marketplace."

"We are doing things differently at BuyMusic.com," says Blum. "The new buzz phrase is no longer MP3 players, but 'digital music players' or DMPs, and refer to any device that is compliant with BuyMusic.com's format and DRM technology."

Honestly, we're not making any of this up. Blum, Sherman, Micro$oft, the Big Five labels & Co clearly subscribe to the popular marketing concept that the mental age of the average American is around nine - on a good day.

And Hey! Guess what? The site will also store purchase information and bill customers' credit cards as they go AND provide video tutorials explaining how to use the web site AND sell 'Get Loaded' T-shirts!

Get loaded? Maybe they're operating on the premise that you have to be drunk to use BuyMusic.

In the meanwhile, rumours that Blum will be appointed to the RIAA's board of directors the day after tomorrow have not been confirmed.

"Get loaded" that's hillarious!!! In your country, (the great USA) that could be mistrued very easily

Has anybody looked at this. I did and they have so many rules I got tried just trying to read all of them.

'The new buzz phrase is no longer MP3 players, but 'digital music players' or DMPs, and refer to any device that is compliant with BuyMusic.com's format and DRM technology.'

What a load of crap. So you mean to tell me that every MP3 player manufacturer is going to have to pay MS a royalty to use this new DRM tech?

Ruh Roh, I don't like that folks... I hardly think Apple is going to license it for the iPod, and I'll be damned if I can find another player out there as nice as my 'pod.

The iTunes service is better, plain and simple. The RIAA is trumpeting this one because Scott has bent over backwards to make them happy. They are able to dictate terms to him. Apple, on the other hand, said this is the way it is going to work. Are you on board?

Windows media 9 - convenient for those with XP, but the rest of us have to download a player. WMA format is DRMed of course, through there are ways round it, but it would be very difficult for a nontechnical user to convert it to another format, a serious problem as not all portable music players support the WMA format, and those that do often have only a partial implimentation of the DRM. (A full implimentation requires a clock. Manufacturers dont want the expense of a battery in every unit, so MS allows them to make a partial implimentation which doesn't support time limited files.).

My website already has a guide to converting WMA into something more supported, such as MP3. It requires only minimal skill, just enough to download and install some software. Depending on version it requires either a simply decryption utility (which is why noone uses this version) or a decrypt-play-record method (EASY).

Cool, whats your URL?

'thousands of independant labels'

Whoa.

So, Apple got some backbone and told them that it had to work this way. Go Apple... if the computers werent that expensive and software not hard-to-get... i'd probably take this compaq to the trash...

The worst part is DRM. There so worried that if they release in the most supported format instead of one you cant burn or do what you want with, that they will lose $1

And so what? Those guys get so much money each day I dont get how they can be angry with losing 8% of sales and blame 100% of it on sharing, what we've been told to do since kindergarten.

I'd be glad if ACCOPS were to go through, it would fail and the govt. would be more worried about cover-ups and the ol' hoo-hah than how much of the RIAA's bloodmoney they are gonna get.

MY dad got forwarded an email about how much the govt. likes to use our tax dollars, i'm gonna submit it.

I just saw on CNN that the recording folks have alleged the LA Jail downloaded and sold hundreds of songs to inmates...can't find any followups on this though.

Recording folks? More like recording fools

Below is a reply I posted to their feeback page found here: http://www.buymusic.com/support/email.aspx (IE Only)

We have to take the time to let them know why they are unable to sell music on the net. Eventually they will have to change or preferrably die. Take some time and send them a message letting them know what you think. BTW, the DRM files can only reside on 1 PC and can never be moved. HD failture? Buy it again. Let them know it's their crappy busness models that cause them to fail not piracy.

************

When are you guys going to get it? People don't want DRM restrictions on their music. I recently uninstalled windows media player. The world is moving to open source. I don't have a single WMA file on my network, and I will never have a WMA file on my network. That's not to say I don't support buying music. If you offered UNRESTRICTED 192K MP3s or even better, high quality Ogg files I would consider your service. By the way, we have found a way to strip DRM using standard MS SDK tools. Read about it here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3517

Since is uses standard tools, it doesn't violate the DMCA. One day the RIAA will learn suing its customers is not the answer. Forcing technological restrictions on its customers is not the answer. Creating un-just ridiculous laws is not the answer. Providing consumers with what they want at a price they are willing to pay does solve the problem. I honestly believe your service will fail.

Jon - did you post a story about CD baby agreement with Apple to publishing Inde artists on itunes?

We need a fight song to protest the RIAA..any good INDIEs out there wanna try...it could become our anthem...

We can use the old standard chant in the meantime..
Hey Hey, Ho Ho
Riaa has got to go
Hey Hey, Ho Ho
MPAA has got to go
Hey Hey, Ho Ho,
All you bastards have got to go!

hahahahaha. Oh no, I'm not BuyMusic.com compliant!!!! Oh god!!

hahahaahahahahaaha
holy shit.

damn, i guess i'll have to keep using mp3's.

hahaaha. this is by far the most comical thing i've heard so far in all of this.

"Digital Music Players" (which is some how not like a cd player? I have digital music players all over the place.)

It's the new buzz? hahaha
With who? I bought an mp3 player when they were the new buzz for $260 a whack. New buzz where?? What dimension? Show me this magical place. Actually, don't. I have to go relieve myself. Maybe in another lifetime.

Codewarrior try boycott.dmusic.com scroll down to parodies. DMCA performed by Tom Barger lyrics by thumbtack, and Oh MY Oh, performed by Hayenswall, lyrics by thumbtack.

sorry for being rude. i didn't actually have to relieve myself. but if i ever do (and i will), it will take precedence over visiting buymusic.com's magical fairyland.

The only good thing that MIGHT come out of this(besides Microsoft losing some money) would be itunes going to 79c per song, and 8$ a cd.

Oh forgot the other good thing, a laugh.

even the LA jail prisoners are downloading too. i wonder if they will be sued or sent to jail? oh wait they are already in jail.

and if all of us are in jail, and we had access to a computer to download and share millions of music? will they sue us if we are in jail?

In the words of my generation (the current high schoolers and early college kids) "Fuck that, I got KaZaa"

if i'm gonna pay money, it better be a .wav

BTW, did anyone see Tommy Lee (yeah, THAT Tommy Lee!) at the launch of this? Also, did anyone read his comments of how this so-called song stealing "sucks"? That was freaking hilarious!

Tommy, your music sucks, you're a convicted wifebeater and you're too drugged-up anyway. Do us all a big favour, and...

SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Hey,
I just registered here, and I've been following all the bullshit quite heavily. I'm a college student, wondering like the rest of you if I'm on the list. Seems to me my university probably wouldn't even let us know if they were subpoenaed, seeing as how boston college and northeastern both have no mention of it on their websites. Anyways, I managed to find a posting of some Kazaa usernames allegedly found among the subpoenas reviewed so far. the link is http://www.techtv.com/news/culture/story/0,24195,3484600,00.html , from TechTV, a pretty reliable source. Just thought everyone would want to know. Hope no one here is on that list. And if so, tell the asslicker so fuck off.

Paying for downloads sucks.

I download to see if a cd/band is worth paying for, then if it is I buy it. Making us pay first to download totally defeats the purpose of downloading before buying doesn't it?

If anything, let mp3s be free, and then have the option of paying for higher quality. For example, set up the service to allow us to download mp3s at 192 or lower, then give us the option within the service to pay to order the cd or download a lossless version of it to burn.

Of course, the biggest problem with any pay service is simply that it will be regulated, so there's going to be a lot of music that isn't available. It would fall victime to the same crap that already goes on with music stores and we'd continue to use other ways of getting the music we really want.

I've seen tons of p2p networks mentioned, but have never seen, heard, or read of the one that I have. LOL Does that mean I won't get sued? In all seriousness though, this Buymusic is BULLS**T. The industry should try these simple ideas (if you don't agree, fine, but with this premise, I would go along):

1. A monthly fee with NO restrictions of songs shared or downloaded would bring in MANY more people

2. Let people share WHATEVER format the song they have is in, be it .mp3, .wav, .wma, or .ogg

3. Charge a minute fee for the software

4. 300,000 songs? PLEASE! Just provide the software, let US bring the music. 3,000,000,000 would be the ballpark figure then.

Speaking of crap - I went to that buymusic.com site, and searched for my two favorite bands - Iced Earth & Nevermore - neither one showed up. Great site.

I tried to check out this new site, but it only supports IE & MP9? I personally don't use either at home. Although I have 2 boxes that will run Windoze, I only use LINUX when at home (unless I have to help the family with one of the Windoze boxes). Why would I run IE when it appears it is the most insecure browser ever created... do I need that kind of security risk? I'm sure MP9 is secure too. Question 1: is M$ trying to bring their monopoly to music too? Question 2: Is there a site that allows purchase of popular music in a standard format for a fair price? Question 3: Is this the bone thrown to make all the RIAA sopenas justafiable? IMHO, this all looks like a win for M$, the RIAA and a load of crap.

checked it out/COOOL thumbtack

Don't worry, no one who knows anything about technology will ever use that site, and I doubt there will be many repeat customers from the rest of the population as they will undoubtably soon run into a situation where they have to purchase the same song multiple times.

Jack Valenti was on CNN about an hour ago. He was talking about the movie industry and that the internet is incredible for distributing movies, but the price will be determined by the consumer. he has an eerie calmness and smile about him. I'm sure that's why he's in that position in the first place.

I loved it. Same old bs from jack, except with the classic 24 hour news 'HOLLYWOOD FIGHTS BACK'

I wanted to give a heads up on that before I fall asleep at my computer. Anybody see the whole thing?

The site wanks. It looks like they must have only top 40 kinds of stuff because I couldn't find even one song that's on my extensive wish list. Their search engine wanks too. Just because I search "Andalucian Moon" does not mean I want every damned song that has the word "moon" in the title.

And as an added bonus, 1 in 5 searches resulted in a "The system was not able to process your request. Please try again later."

buymusic.com failing in 10...9...8...

The sad thing about this is, it might survive. PressPlay survives, and its worse then this.

Stupid people do stupid things...

I knew when I heard about BuyMusic that it would fail, and also that it was just another RIAA ploy to get people to subscribe to thier line of crap....And that was without even reading the restrictions on BuyMusic.com......

Honestly, what we all need to do is organize! All persons must realize that the dinosaurs in congress are taking handouts from the RIAA, MPAA, and other special interest groups every election cycle and move to IMPEACH THE WASHINTON BASED CHRONIES OF THE SPECIAL INTERESTS! ONce that is done, and only once that is done will the people have the opportunity to gain a semi-honest stance in Washington!

What is it going to take? MAybe a mass 60 million person sit-in on the White House lawn to get our government to realize that it has taken a wrong turn?

Feel free to send your suggestions to me at Dark_Magician_1974@hotmail.com

You may want to go to this site:

http://bsdvault.net/article.php?sid=527&mode=&order=0

From what I understand most of the people here are probably using Micro$oft Windoze. Here you will see what you agreed to when you decided to do all of those critical updates that the M$ crew forced you into with Service Pack 1.

Though this probably won't change the way any of you use your computers you may want to think about jumping ship and heading to a new OS before Bill gets his hands on all the content on your hard drives. The whole RIAA thing stinks of M$ manouvering to make a few more bucks from us and to bleed us dry in our pocketbooks. It's just like in all the stories you read ... the moron down the street is convinced to set the bomb while the real villain walks away scot free.

I just went to buymusic.com and to the Help section to see exactly what the conditions were. It's been 10 mins and I'm still laughing my head off. They must think that all music listeners are right twats to agree to these idiotic conditions. Here are the conditions as on their website:

Copying Music from Your Computer to Your Approved Portable Device

Your approved portable device must be SDMI compliant or it will not play music from BuyMusic.com. To verify if your player is SDMI compliant, check the manufacturer’s specifications or contact the manufacturer.
Your approved portable device must be Digital Rights Management (DRM) compliant, because your music download files use DRM license encryption technology. Non-DRM compliant digital media players will not decrypt or play your music files.
Burning Music from Your Computer to Your CDs
CD burner – Internal or external. Note: An external CD burner can be plugged into your computer via a simple USB connection but is sometimes more expensive. An internal CD burner is sometimes less expensive but requires you to open up your computer case for installation.
Blank CDs, also called media. Note: Your CD media must be compatible with your CD burner. If you are burning on a “plus” burner you must use “plus” media.
Examples: You can burn your music files onto X Brand CD+R disks using your Y Brand CD+ Burner. Or you can burn your music onto W Brand CD-R disks using your Z Brand CD- Burner.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
License Restrictions
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music File Licenses
When you purchase and download music from BuyMusic.com, your music files are accompanied by a license with certain restrictions. The music files are encrypted with SDMI license technology to be sure that they are used according to your license restrictions. (See Minimum System Requirements.)
IMPORTANT: Make sure you mean to buy your music from your primary computer (for example: your home computer) so that it contains your primary license. The licenses are non-transferable. Example: You cannot buy your music on your home machine and then transfer your primary license to your second home computer. The computer you buy from becomes the primary computer with the primary license for that song. You can only copy music from your primary machine via your primary license. See below for details.

Downloading, Transferring, and Burning
Each record label has control over these license restrictions including the number of times you may:

transfer your songs to another computer(s)
transfer your songs to an approved portable device.
burn your songs to CD
BuyMusic.com complies with each record label and adjusts the SDMI license on each of your music downloads accordingly.
Two Types of Licenses: Primary and Secondary
There are two types of licenses: Primary and Secondary. The primary license is downloaded to the machine you used to buy your music (for example your home computer). Your primary license enables you to copy your music from your primary computer to your approved portable device and to burn it to your CDs as many times as the record label allows.

If you download a secondary license, you do so onto a secondary computer (for example your second home computer). Your secondary license enables you ONLY to listen to your music on your secondary computer. A secondary license does NOT allow you to copy your music from your secondary computer to your approved portable devices or to burn it to your CDs.

Make sure you mean to buy your music from your primary computer so that it contains your primary license. The licenses are non-transferable. You cannot buy your music on one machine and then transfer your primary license to another computer. The computer you buy from becomes the primary computer with the primary license for that song.

All that pay-per-download services will do is provide an ever-cheapening alternative for hard-ass people who still buy CD's at full price.

People who pay $1.10 per track on CD will switch to $.70 per track for download.
And those who get it from p2p will still get it for free.

The RIAA will die. Their enemies are none other than Technology, Mathematics, and Truth. Those tend to be kinda hard to beat.

Ah, SDMI players required. SDMI provides the basic framework to support WMDRM on those systems, thats all. Ive read the spec - its basicly a mixture of tamperproofing, authentication and tamper detection for portables. Irritateing for the users, SDMI requires authenticated media, so you can only use securedigital (notcompactflash or smartmedia) based players, or those with internal ram, and even with those you have to transfer the music by connecting the cable from the player to the PC. You cant just buy a PC SD drive and copy the files onto that.

I need to update my website on SDMI at some point, I havn't made any changes to that entry since it was in the vaporware stage. (which its hardly progressed beyond).

I notice Buy.Com have a banner which features Bowie,Elvis,Madonna and John Lennon and others in a kind of vague watermark collage.
I trust they are not trying to infringe on the copyright of said persons,or their executors,and have the express approval of same.
The suits may win a few opening battles here and there but I feel the free market will prevail.

The "free" market on p2p networks will prevail of course

The bottom line on DRM is simply: It doesn't work.

Anyone who has a full-duplex sound card, or two PCs with digital audio I/O, one to play, one to record, will tell you that.

As for Winamp's Windows Media support and Disk Writer plugin...

This is another case where the computer executives have no clue that the "home" user can program rings around their systems. Their only recourse is to continue to try and appease people (or in recent RIAA cases strongarm) them into falling into line with large corporate systems from Microsoft. The easiest way to control the masses is to make sure they can only drive on one highway.

the terms for the buymusic agrrement make about as much sense as astrophysics....no wait astrophysics makes more sense

Someone earlier posted a message about converting from WMA to another format such as MP3. You can do that but it's not a 1:1 conversion, you would loose sound quality. Even if it is listenable, what's the point in even trying? If you buy an entire album from this service you may only be a couple bucks cheaper then a new CD and if you used Half.com it might actually be cheaper. Either way, you would be free to rip and burn as many copies as you want and not worry about what happens if your hard drive crashes.


Joe Cotellese
www.clearstatic.org

Altgrr: The site uses WMDRM. Part of that is a feature which disables digital outputs on compliant sound cards when a protected file is played. (many cards are compliant, includeing creative cards). This is very annoying for people with digital speakers Loopback recording is disabled in a similar way. Fortunatly there are other ways to convert the files.

Kudos to hamjay711..im a college student and like hell i can afford to buy a 22 dollar cd that only costs 75 cents to make the cd and maybe like a doller or two to actualy record the cd and the rest goes to who knows where. Fuk that shit.

As Spica said, techn. math and truth will prevail. I am going even further..just COMMON SENSE. In Ohio, there is this huge advertising campaign against smoking.. Its called "Truth" You see it everywhere now. On tv, on the radio, and when you go see movies, there is always a "Truth" commercials.

COMMON SENSE WILL PREVAIL... MATH IS THE ULTIMATE SCIENCE!

You know what's incredibly funny about all of this -- Apple again is the leader, and here comes M$, late the party again....

The only difference in all of this is that M$'s music service is not going to be as successful as the iTunes music store as soon as Apple can port a slick-as-shit version of iTunes over to the Windows platform.

What would you rather use to organize, play, burn, and buy your CDs? 1 product or 4?

Well, I went to buymusic.com to see what they were all about & I couldn't even get into the site 'cause I don't use IE. I use Opera and this apparently is unacceptable. Guess all I have left to say about that is...BYEmusic.com.

MS doesn't have anything to di with buymusic beyond licenseing them the DRM and compression technology. Its not surpriseing, MS is the only company with a working audio DRM system for windows apart from realmedia, and noone likes realmedia

Try searching this site for any band off of Epitaph Records and Fat Wreck. Probably won't find any.. why? They're not with the RIAA.

This site is bullshit, how can they expect a decent person to pay 79 cents for a song they can't listen to outside of their computer. Fuck that, I have Kazaa, Soulseek, Newsgroups, IRC, friends to borrow cd's from and warez websites.

I saw a commercial for that site a few days ago (the one with different ppl singing "Rapper's Delight") and *almost* went to the site out of a morbid curiosity. Not going to now, though and after reading that article about Windows (thnx huxleyknew) I'm sitting here downloading Linux Red Hat. No more windows over here. Sheesh. As long as Linux can write Html,play dvds, mp3s and movies, I'll be happy. (and I'm pretty sure it can). Glad I found this site.

userm1909: I'd recommend Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/) over Redhat. Use the KDE GUI...

For a music dowload service to be successfull it will have to offer the following:

1. Single track downloads should be priced at between .10 - .25 if in a compressed format (MP3, MP4, Ogg Vorbis, HE AAC), or no more than $.50 for uncompressed PCM.
2. Full albums should cost $7-$8 and no more than $10. Full albums should also include album artwork and liner notes.
3. Compressed downloads should be a high quality (256kbps) MP3, Ogg Vorbis or perferably HE AAC MP4.
4. No DRM or Copy Protection. After purchasing the track or album the consumer should be able to copy the track to CD, portable player or another computer without restriction. In other words abide by the current Fair Use laws.

Before the riaa or its' member labels get this no RIAA sponsered music download service/scheme will be successful.

Mp3s and the other DRM'd counterparts ARE NOT the same quality as a CD audio track. Also the RIAA wants to control how and where each person listens to the music they legally buy using DRM and illegal Copy Protection, it's no wonder consumers turn to filesharing first.

The same fear of piracy is what is crippling the current crop of DVD, Super Audio CD, and DVD-Audio players. All three have the ability to output in a digital format but because of the Entertainment industry's fear of rampant piracy it forces all manufacturers of all three players to disable the digital out in favor of a strickly analog one.

This is why no one will buy them. If you have a home theater set up which uses digital connectors you will find yourself forced to listen and watch inferior analog audio and video if you want to include one of these players in your set up. And if HDTV ever takes off guess what--no digital connection to between the TV and DVD.

But of corse the entertainment industry wants you to upgrade to HDTV because it will have encyption and the ability for the media companies to completely control when and where you view it.

The bottom line is all the media companies want the make the public think it okay to be charged every single time you listen to a song or watch a movie.

Anybody seen the commercial? Total BS.

What a bunch of crap. I went to BuyMusic.com and searched for over 40 of my favorite bands and didn't find a single one. I listen to mostly Industrial music, and in their 'Industrial' section they have a total of 2 'Industrial artists'.. just 2. Out of the many thousands of Industrial artists, 2 is all they could conjour up.. Nine Inch Nails and Ministry.. wow. I'm so impressed. I could just use iMesh or KaZaa and download their entire discography for free. What happened to the 'Thousands of independent labels'? Ha! I hope BuyCrappyMusic."con" turns out to the be the music industries biggest failure. crap. just crap.