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Hello Matt,

Thank you for contacting buy.com.

We apologize for any problems you have encountered with BuyMusic.com.
We appreciate your comments and suggestions and will use them to help
improve our products and services when making future decisions. Thanks
again for your feedback.

We appreciate your business.

Sincerely,

BuyMusic.com
www.BuyMusic.com

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
Order Number:
Too bad Apple's service blows yours out of the water. Too many
restrictions. Once the iTunes Music Store is ported for Windows, your
service will be doomed. Like usual, Apple innovates and you guys
imitate--nice commercials!
 
Originally posted by MattG
Actually I think that's Ozzy...

Yeah, I didn't realize that... I think you're right...

But if I was mistaken, I wonder how many more people will be disappointed?
 
John

Originally posted by G4scott
I believe that this site will barely make it, or go down in flames, and here's why.

1.) With the DRM, you don't know what you can do with one song to the next, since each song can have different restrictions.

2.) Their pricing model is like a fat man in a little coat... They advertise 79¢ per song, but I have yet to see one of those songs. They are probably for independent artists, which much fewer people will buy from. After browsing around, the iTunes Music Store is either the same price, or cheaper than buymusic. There are also albums that have certain tracks unavailable, that are available on the iTunes Music Store. I haven't run across any songs higher priced that 99¢, but I'm sure they're out there...

3.) The only people who are going to use this are grandmas and grandpas, or families that have no clue about computers at all. Hardcore, or even normal computer users will still use p2p networks for their music because it's free, and there's no restrictions. Buymusic is "The Music Store for the Dumb."

4.) You can only listen to music on your computer, or on about 5 different portable audio players. Apple should make a commercial to counter that, showing a guy listening to music on his PC that he bought with buymusic.com, wearing that "get loaded" t-shirt, and his mom comes in to vacuum the carpet, his siblings start to watch TV, and his friends come over, and he can't listen to his music. Then, they should show a kid using a Mac, with an iPod, and the iTunes Music Store, and when his mom comes into the room to vacuum, he takes his iPod with him, and when he gets distracted there, he moves somewhere else, and when his friends come, they go out for a night on the town in their VW beatle, with their music playing from the iPod. It would show how much better the iTunes Music Store is. Apple could also make another commercial where a kid with a CD player is burning a CD, and then the CD gets damaged, and he burns another, and that one gets buried by the dog, and he burns another, and that one gets stolen, and oops, he can't burn any more CD's... Which brings me to my next point:

5.) What if you move to another computer? What if a virus erases your HD? What if a CD fails to burn properly? There are too many risks that come with using a PC to make buying music with such a strict DRM enjoyable. You'd spend all your time protecting your music library, and less time enjoying it.

6.) You can't put music into movies you make. Or at least I doubt you can. With such a strict DRM, I doubt you can do much than listen to your music. You can't put it into a home video or anything like that, where with the iTunes Music Store, you can put it into movies, and burn them onto DVD's.

7.) Their website sucks. There is no customization. Browsing music is a horrible experience, since it just shows things by song, using up at least 30 pixels a row... the iTunes Music Store uses a standard line in a list to display information about a song. It also makes it easy to find albums too, and it doesn't restrict it to 20 results per page. Using their website is a pain, and I'd be surprised if any of their 'dumb' customers who would actually buy music from them could find the music they want.

8.) Windows Media Player. Enough said. I don't feel I need to rag on why using a codec owned by m$ is a bad idea...


I've decided to buy an album from the iTunes Music Store today, and maybe more later on when I have the money. The album, "Anthem", by Less Than Jake, is nowhere to be found on the BuyMusic site...

I also have another question about their store... On their main logo:
bm_topspot3.gif


Isn't the guy with the sun glasses John Lennon? Which brings me to my next question, if that is John Lennon, where are the beatles?

Hopefully this will do Apple some good. When this store fails, hopefully the big 5 will realize that an Apple-style, looser DRM is required to actually sell music online. People may still pirate, but it will be much easier to obtain music legally, and having a few people buying music is better than none.


No that's Ozzy..
 
OK, guys, while these insulting e-mails to buymusic.com may be fun, it only makes the mac community look like a bunch of dumb, flaming trolls (although some do exist here...)

If you're going to send an e-mail, do it professionally, calmly explaining why their music service inhales profusely, and why it is inevitably doomed to failure. Use long drawn out examples that make them have to think about what you're saying.

When you send a stupid message saying "YOUR MUSIC SERVICE SUXORS AND YOU WILL DIE AND APPLE WILL RULE THE WORLD W00T!", you look just as dumb as them.

Come on guys, have some class. We are Mac users, after all...
 
OMFG!!!!!!!!

The "commercials" are absolutely IDENTICAL to Apple's iTMS spots.

That is so so so so so so so LAME!!!!!!!!

I bet they get sued.

And it even uses a bit of steve-o language. "Music downloads for the rest of us".

LAME LAME LAME :mad:
 
Re: Let's all buy something that's only available via ITMS

Bought a Jimmy Buffett Album. Yep, I'm a total parrot head. But at least I'm a parrot head supporting iTMS.

Everyone, buy a single today, and show buymusic.com they have nothing over the Mac community.

Time to raise the Apple pirate flag again. Arrrgh.
 
Dear Buy.com

Nice Bait and Switch tactics. .

If one were to use Tommy Lee to advertise the product , one would feature his music on the METAL page...that you did correctly.

Where you failed is in PRICING IT higher than your promotional pricing.

d'oh.

If i was drawn to your site by the thought of getting Mr. Lee's latest monstrosity of crap metal, attracted by the price of .79 cents per song...and then was presented with the pricing of .99 cents per song...I'd think... they were trying to rip me off.

Guess what... you are.

It's bad form and poor business practice. In common tongue, a stupid move.

and while i'm at it.

Do me the favor to PLEASE get the names of the songs correct in your listings,
I spotted several errors in your metal section. I'm sure I will find others.

For a fee of $50,000 I will point them out. For $50,000 more I will ensure they never happen again.

oh, and one last thing.
Your company and product are only as good as your public image.

By bashing Apple, by ignoring iPod users and by boasting about how many songs you'll sell... you position yourself as a blowhard.

next you'll be running around a stage all sweaty screaming like an idiot.

Good luck recovering from this doomed business venture,

Love and Kisses,
Killswitch
 
Originally posted by MattG
Hello Matt,

Thank you for contacting buy.com.

We apologize for any problems you have encountered with BuyMusic.com.
We appreciate your comments and suggestions and will use them to help
improve our products and services when making future decisions. Thanks
again for your feedback.

We appreciate your business.

Sincerely,

BuyMusic.com
www.BuyMusic.com

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
Order Number:
Too bad Apple's service blows yours out of the water. Too many
restrictions. Once the iTunes Music Store is ported for Windows, your
service will be doomed. Like usual, Apple innovates and you guys
imitate--nice commercials!

They don't seem to answer anyone's questions or comment on Apple. I'm fixin to e-mail them saying this:

So far I have read many e-mail's that people have sent Buy.com regarding their new Music Service, but in all of them you all seem to be avoiding most questions and repeating the things that we already know and in the end you don't answer our questions. So if you reply to this email please don't give me the crap about being sorry for problems encountered because i'm not using your service nor do I plan to use it. And I would like to know what is up with the commericals. They are clearly copied from the iTMS commericals that Apple did and you and everyone at Buy.com know it. I have also read on the web that your service will be Dubbed iMusic. If so then Buy.com is yet again copying Apple, who ya'll have went out of your way to insult with the smashing of the guitar that Apple uses and by things said about Steve Jobs. I personally think that once iTMS is out for Windows your service is going to be quickly swept under the rug and your "from" $.79 and the "from"7.95 are very misleading since it's pretty hard to actually find albums and songs that cost that much. And when you find one they are full of DRM. Once people figure out your scheme and get fed up with having to deal with many different style of DRM depending on how much you pay your service is going to go down under fast.
 
Hey guys, im gonna use Scott's (the man behind Buymusic) visionary ideas to start my new music service called iMusic Tunes Store, our logo is gonna be a Orange with two bites out of it. I expect to get at least 5 million downloads per day, which accounts to about 200,000 downloads a year! (read the USA Today article for Scott's great math) The price for a track is gonna start at 5 cents (for Barney's theme song) but most song prices will range anywhere from the cheap price of $5-$25.95. our theme, which i spent the most time thinking up will be "Think Differently"........Steve is a visionary but he just doesn't know how to sell songs
 
Buy.com: Can we sell Apple computers?

Apple: No

Buy.com: You'll be sorry.


And then came the bashing apple commercials. It's great advertising, if you know about that sort of thing. It makes the other 95% laugh and want the product for more reasons than just the product.
 
Taken from their music page on the side-

What is SACD? It looks just like a normal CD, but that’s where the similarity ends. The difference in sound quality is so great that you have to hear it to believe it! SACD represents the highest quality sound source available today.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the assumption that DVD-Audio was the highest quality source available today? (other then DAT of course)
 
I see sooo many posts complaining about other online music stores... jeez, don't you guys want to see some competition? Brings prices down... the fact that Apple has pretty much ignored competition on their computer lines is why their prices can be so high.
 
Originally posted by Lord Bodak
From the BuyMusic site:



So here are the questions. What if I get a new computer and get rid of my old one? My primary license is now gone? Even if I had full rights from both computers, what if I am out of "download" credit for a track but I get a new machine?

And since you have to use the site to get the secondary license, what if they go under? My music is now trapped on my PC forever?

I don't know much about SDMI, but how do they limit the number of burns? It seems they would also have to use the website for that (or can the music actually store how many burns are remaining? If so, I imagine someone would find a way to hack the file to increase the count). So if they went under, you couldn't even burn to CD...

My opinion: doomed from the start.

Once it's burned to an audio CD, it's an audio CD. Load it back in at 44.1, 16 bit, Stereo aif or wav and you'll never have to worry about it again. You won't lose any quality loading it back in from the disc (unless you convert it to mp3, aac, wma or some other compressed format) and you won't occur any degredation going back to CD.

Apple can play the actual files off a CD. Just copy the audio cd files off the disc to your computer and play them.
 
Originally posted by kaltsasa
I tend to agree, I was an emusic subscriber. While it was great for a couple months, I quickly ran out of decent music to get from them.

I'm going to have to disagree. I found eMusic to be an awesome source of music when it comes to indie bands. My collection grew from a few hundred to a few thousand.. thanks to eMusic.
 
In a way this is good.
Let people eat buy.com's crap.
Once Apple comes along with their better food, guess what?
Buy.com folds faster than Ben Folds 5. :)
 
Originally posted by ZildjianKX
I see sooo many posts complaining about other online music stores... jeez, don't you guys want to see some competition? Brings prices down... the fact that Apple has pretty much ignored competition on their computer lines is why their prices can be so high.

A little competition is good, but when your competition copies you in the ways that BuyMusic.com has it ticks people off. Which is the case here.
 
Sorry for all the separate posts...

But what about "The World's Largest Download Store" ?????

Sort of like "The World's Fastest Personal Computer" eh?

Buycrap.com is going to burn for eternity.
 
From La Times article :

"Blum's new venture won't be able to duplicate the simplicity that some analysts say has been crucial to Apple's success, in part because BuyMusic.com doesn't have the technology or the licenses Apple does. Every song sold by the iTunes music store carries the same price and limits on copying, but tracks offered by BuyMusic.com will come with a range of prices and restrictions."

"If it's a failure," he (Blum) said, "it would be deathly for myself because I'm betting so big on it."

"But if BuyMusic.com is a success, he plans to take the same approach to downloadable movies, he said."


he wants to sell movies next.
 
A terrible music service with deceptive advertising and restrictive fair use policies.

Interesting to note:
(from BuyMusic.com's best seller list)

Audioslave CD on iTunes Music Store:
$11.99
Audioslave CD on Buy.com:
$12.69

Ataris CD on iTunes (by song only):
$14.99
Ataris CD on Buy.com (by song only):
Full Album not available

Beyonce CD on iTunes:
$11.99
Beyonce CD on Buy.com (by song only):
Incomplete album
$14.99
and they charge you 99 cents for a 19 sec track!!

Not to mention WMP files....
 
Originally posted by freundt
Sorry,

not to troll, but Steve was not a visionary when it comes to iTMS. He was just able to do what emusic and alot of other services were not - Convinve the big 5 to give him less restricitve DRM.

Emusic service has no DRM (At least when I used it TWO YEARS AGO) uses mp3 as the format and you are free to do whatever with all the files. So what was the downfall of Emusic? The big 5 refused to participate.

PressPlay, MP3.com, etc.. There are tons of services that came out before iTMS with the only caveat being more DRM.

So.
Once again.
Not to troll, but iTMS is visionary only in that it got the big 5 to participlate with less DRM. (and I think that is because it uses such a little used audio format on a platform with < 5% user base. - no to disparage the audio format - it's just not supported as widely as mp3 or wma)

Felt like that needed to be said considering all the "the Window's world copied Apple again and does it poorly again" comments.

The vision wasn't with respect to the idea "lets have an online music store" but with the execution. The design of the iTMS is simply brilliant. It's economic in use of space but still easy to navigate. And Jobs was able to figure out what set of DRM requirements would make most consumers happy but still provide protections.

So, no, the "vision" had nothing to do with getting the big-5 on board.
 
Originally posted by ZildjianKX
I see sooo many posts complaining about other online music stores... jeez, don't you guys want to see some competition? Brings prices down... the fact that Apple has pretty much ignored competition on their computer lines is why their prices can be so high.

I don't think that the prices would come down. If buy.com sells as many as they say they will, it will not benefit apple in anyway because apple uses a different format, requiring that the music be supplied to them in a different format. So the only way that prices would ever drop is if people were loyal to one supplier or suppliers that offer the same format and DRM.

I am also starting to fear that in the future, assuming that more variations of online music store will appear, we will have to remember where we purchased each song and what player plays it.... although I doubt that anyone would ever try to compete with apple on the mac platform due to iTMS success... I am even surprised that MS still makes WMP for the mac.
 
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