Technical Glitches Plague BuyMusic.com 691
An anonymous reader submits: "Despite its much larger target market, BuyMusic.com does not seem to be the runaway success that Apple's iTunes Music Store was. USA Today is reporting that customers have experienced technical glitches that prevent them from playing their purchases. Another customer reports that the BuyMusic tech support does little more than say 'Sorry, but that's YOUR problem.' Finally, a musician whose music is for sale at BuyMusic questions the legality of BuyMusic's catalog." Scriptygoddess's account of her unhappy experience is mirrored here.
The real problem comes to view... (Score:4, Insightful)
When an artist signs with a distribution point, etc, they may lose their own music. As a musician that would seem horrible, but it happens to many different people (animators, etc).
Maybe the contract with "The Orchard" had certain terms. We really would need to see that to get both sides of the story here...
Maybe they "sold out" and now just don't want to look like "crap" music.
History repeats itself.... yet again.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I may not have a Doctorate with a thesis written on pattern recognitions, but even I can figure this one out...
MP3 is for pirates (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
to quote the linked blog:
After all the songs downloaded, I tried to play them. 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...]
This is just sloppy programming on their part. They are forced to make excuses for other people's software in the first week of release. Apple tossed out iTMS to their entire userbase and said "Now go use it. It works. Perfectly. Always."
The simplicity of simply allowing 3 computers for playback through iTMS is great (albeit for some that have 13 computers and want to listen to music on ALL at the same time) Just authorize one computer and it will always be able to playback your music even if it's away from a 'net connection.
BuyMusic.com was rushed and it's apparent in the first damn week. It doesn't hold a candle to iTMS. I can't wait to see it crumble.
Surprise, surprise. (Score:5, Insightful)
Emphasis on ease of use, customer experience, technical quality.
Focal issue: adding value to Mac systems to attract switchers and sell iPods.
Result: Pretty decent music service, all things considered.
BuyMusic.com:
Emphasis on Being Cheaper than iTMS, locking out non-approved systems, Looking an awful lot like iTMS.
Focal issue: Establish self as competition for iTMS before Apple gets the Windows version out.
Result: left as an exercise for the reader.
If you bought a car (Score:5, Insightful)
If you buy something you usually have at least a bit of understanding that it's going to be useful for something. If I buy a mop and the handle breaks on the first use, back it goes - and stores almost always will take them back. At least the ones that stay in business do...
Which brings us back to BuyMusic, who seemingly does not care if what you bought is functional or not.
I feel a tiny, tiny bit sorry for them because they have to deal with PC's that might have a messed up WMP (like my computer at work that freezes every time you try to use WMP for music or video). Then again, they could have picked some other format that was known to be more compatible and less finicky. I'm sure if they'd tried AskSlashdot they might have had a few suggestions.
Similarly you have to feel a little sorry for them for pirating other people's music, after all they bought it from a third party... but if I bought a few songs from a guy on the corner who said it was "OK to share them" I probably still would not be any less liable for copyright infringement (or would I? Not sure on that one).
Rediculous (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MP3 is for pirates (Score:1, Insightful)
whats wrong with it? I guess it works. but its a dignity thing.. real player makes you it's bitch
Ease of use. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apple screwed the pooch. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think BM will affect Apple's chances with iMS for Windows. I believe that market is Apple's to lose, at least as long as the only competition is as arrogant and incompetent as Mr. Blum and his minions.
Re:What are they trying to prevent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, the RIAA/MPAA would be long gone, had they not finally realized that audio and video casettes would be the greatest boon to their industry since the gramophone. It may take them some time, but unless they accept p2p as their biggest promoters, they are toast.
I still remember listening to copied Michael Jackson tracks when I was 6 yrs old or so. And playing copied apple ][ games since I got my first system. Since then I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on software and music, and I'm sure I'd barely have spent a dime if I hadn't got a little "free taste".
For Christ's sake, I'm sure this has been going on since the first time some cave man decided to copy his neighbor's clay pot design.
When Purchasing "digital media"... (Score:5, Insightful)
The blogger obviously puts in too much trust on such experimental media (as opposed to established formats such as MP3 and Ogg, which many of us knows at least *works*) with a plethora of restrictions, and (legally) playable on one platform! All I can say to her is "Serves you right, ignorant casual user!".
You need to know your stuff before engaging in things such as DRM-enabled "new" media. Perhaps now more people will see evil behind such implementations and the fallacy behind claims that it will make your life easier, add more purchasing power to your dollar, world peace, bla bla bla...
Re:The real problem comes to view... (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the customer service anecdote raises more serious issues with buymusic. Fortunately, most (perhaps all, I don't know the payment setup) customers will use credit cards to purchase music, and Americans enjoy credit card rights that protect us from faulty or undelivered products. (It's too bad that customer mentioned both calling her credit card company and publicizing the mishap in a weblog; it would have been interesting to have seen which of those two threats made buymusic buckle.) Moreover, the nature of the service is such that most customers will 'try it out' first buying just a song or two, or maybe a whole album, so the risk is reduced further.
Me too.. Me too.. (Score:5, Insightful)
But, it fits the whole windows environment of weak imitations of software and hardware features. It's not always copied from Apple, but it's not too rare. Remember all the fruit colored computers and components after the first iMac? And all the acrylic and cubish cases after the Mac cube?
Neither my MacOS X cube nor my Linux box can access the service anyway. I'll gladly stick with iTunes. (Now, if only Apply would produce a Linux version of iTunes, I'd be all set.)
No Refunds? (Score:5, Insightful)
I could understand why a local CD store or even Apple wouldn't offer refunds on purchased music, but why do these guys refuse to refund money if they can actually know whether you are still listening to the music or not?
If you can burn unprotected audio CDs... (Score:2, Insightful)
I would HAPPILY fork over my money to anyone who would be willing to sell me digital music that has the same versatility and sound quality that I can get from a normal, boring, store-bought CD. No problems transferring THOSE to personal players!
Re:If you bought a car (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank you for visiting BuyMusic.com. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm well I guess I'm not ever using their service.
I use Mozilla
If the service does not support MicroSoft alternatives then I wont be using them ever. I'm trying to get away from using a MS based OS not get trapped into it more and more.
Any company that's forcing their users to rely on a operating system and certian products of that operating system are just asking for trouble.
I'm sure if MS released it's code to these buymusic people then that poor girl would not of had that nightmare of the plugin crashing.
Re:RTFM (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm starting to smell fake grass.
Re:RTFM (Score:5, Insightful)
They make this clear before you buy the music. If I tell you before hand not to do something, and you do it anyways, is it my fault or yours?
BuyMusic.com's fault is that they provide horrible service. So people are going to complain, ask for their money back, write nasty messages about them, boycott them, etc. They're much more misleading than most companies people deal with. They knowingly use a relatively unknown and troublesome Microsoft DRM Windows Media format, without making any *active* effort to inform people these aren't MP3's. This makes people mad.
Sure, BuyMusic.com may have their fine print in order, but how many people are going to say "Well, I guess BuyMusic.com is a great company...look at this fine print here, and that fine print there...all together, it means this broken music service is not their fault. Boy, if only I had spent a few hours researching their list of supported programs, legal claims, and tech support pages before I bought my songs."
Re:Thank you for visiting BuyMusic.com. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The real problem comes to view... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, an RIAA email to an ISP, eBay, or college is all it takes to have them remove 'infringing' material, and give up all your user info.
"Assuming" copyright is an RIAA specialty. Unfortunately, it doesn't work the other way 'round.
Re:No Refunds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not Good for Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are a burned buymusic.com customer, and Apple releases iTunes for Windows - what's the likelihood that you will give that a shot as well?
Apple needs to get iTunes for Windows out ASAP before all these jokers - buymusic, napster 2, etc. ruin the legal music buying experience for everyone.
In the end, people will pay for music - if it's done right.
So true (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:iTunes sucks ass too... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:technical glitches (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I agree with their tech support.. if they give you a music file their obligation has been fullfilled. if you can't play it how is it their problem?
Simple. You won't come back.
Re:probable causes (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not Good for Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What are they trying to prevent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Getting better... (Score:4, Insightful)
I read your journal entry on BuyMusic. Some of the issues are similar in iTunes (like The Wall being about the same price). But stuff like that comes from the record companies dictating the price. It would be really, really interesting to see how many albums priced about $9.99 actually sell, as that's really the limit I'm willing to pay for electronic-only content.
Also, AAC is not quite as proprietary as it would seem, there are other players that can use it (with the current DRM? Not sure). It will be really interesting to see what kind of software they end up releasing for Windows...
Re:History repeats itself.... yet again.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Furthermore, Apple's DRM is consistent for all tracks. From what I've been reading about BM, they have different restrictions for different songs.
And you can easily burn any AAC file purchased from Apple to multiple CD's for listening on whatever OS you want. The only restriction there is that you can burn the same playlist over and over. You're limited to 10 burns of the same playlist.
You get what you pay for (Score:1, Insightful)
As I said in the subject line, you get what you pay for. If you don't mind the headaches and "close enough" engineering in order to save the cash, that's your choice.
Thank you for pointing this out. I agree, I get a bit tired of my Mac brethren complaining about how the store, as launched, is Windows Only when iTunes Music Store, as launched, is Mac Only. As for AAC, however, it's part of QuickTime--which is available for Windows. So download and install QuickTime on your Windows machine and listen to all the AAC-encoded audio you want.
Also, I believe AAC is part of the new MPEG standard. There may be some issue with supporting it--I know there was some royalty issue for encoding or playing back MPEG material. But assuming I'm wrong, it's a standard which anyone can implement.
Early Adopters... (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies should wise up and stop trying to blow people off. All it takes is one angry customer to write something in their blog, get linked from Slashdot, and its all over. Bad first impressions are the hardest to get over.
Usually you have to get the more savvy early adopter type onboard before you start screwing people over. It is the masses who are rather blase when their personal information will be sold and are ripped off.
Why Digital Rights Management will fail (Score:4, Insightful)
- DRM can only further complicate the issue of media transfer; it can never simplify it
- DRM takes the right-of-storage away from the user; people are not getting what they pay for
- DRM, if it takes a hold, will make long term archival of media next to impossible (think long term: this is a significant problem)
- DRM puts questionable authorities in control of media on your computer. In many cases your computer ceases to function as an independant entity.
- DRM is erroneously pushed as a "security enhancement" for user. The reason for the lies is that DRM actually has no benefit for the user.
The key point: DRM offers no benefit for the user.Re:Apple, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the iTMS has many partial albums; if it bothers you, just think of them as songs, not albums. At any rate, when you see partials there, it's not Apple's doing, but the licensors (the labels). For whatever reason, they haven't authorized certain songs for release on the iTMS. From what I've seen of the iTMS and BuyMusic, there are a number of albums that are missing the same songs at both outlets, which seems to indicate the labels just don't want to sell certain tracks this way. Neither Apple nor Buy can force the labels to give them specific tracks. Also, FWIW, I've seen albums at the iTMS that had stuff added piecemeal - so that the debut week, for example, there were only three tracks from a particular album available, but a few weeks later, the complete album tracklist was there. I don't know why an album might be added a few tracks at a time, but it's happened; perhaps the later tracks weren't initially planned for availability, but were added in response to user requests, or something...
Re:Different methaphor same problems. (Score:3, Insightful)
Q: When I buy music, am I buying a physical object which stores music, or am I buying a license to enjoy the music on that object?
A: No.
Which is why I try to avoid buying things from the entertainment industry- you don't really get anything (except maybe sued).
Re:technical glitches (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, y'see, they're called BuyMusic.com, and they're in the business of selling stuff to consumers. One of the best ways to ensure repeat business is to treat customers with grace and generosity: that's where the old maxim "the customer is always right" comes from. Even if that is impractical in the digital age, it seems that it's in BuyMusic's best interests to treat early adopters well, so that the buzz surrounding their service stays positive. It seems to me that they're not doing a very good job of it so far. And they bear an extra burden, not only having to establish themselves as a viable service, but having to establish that the service they provide is economically viable and technically possible: they seem to be falling down on the latter count, and alienating people who actually decided to drop money on an untested service doesn't bode well for their success on the former.
So maybe you're right, that technically, as soon as the .wmv file hits the user's hard drive, the BuyMusic folks have discharged their obligations, but in a larger sense, if they leave users adrift, they're failing in their obligation to themselves: it's precisely their problem when users don't come back to spend more money there, and dissuade their friends from using the service as well.
Re:Why (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Me too.. Me too.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not at all.
Just keep in mind, if you ever use Konqueror in KDE 3.2 (which will be the first release of KHTML with Safari's changes included), or if you ever notice that a few of those Linux programs start to get Rendezvous-enabled, you're using Apple's code. They've given back, and they're still doing so.
Re:Apple, etc. (Score:4, Insightful)
First, they have to get people to download it....big hurdle there.
Second, they have to get people to actually buy music. Even bigger hurdle, but it slopes down rapidly once people actually use iTMS and like it.
Finally, they have to get people to move their music over from winamp, windows media player, real, etc. so that iTunes has value outside of download it, move it somewhere else, play it.
That means they need to have import utilities for all the other library management tools ready to go on day one. People have to say "iTunes is the best program under the sun" and ditch everything else for it to become totally successful.
Re:iTunes sucks ass too... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It is your problem not ours... (Score:2, Insightful)
Frankly, if I were Apple I would make a version of iTunes and the Music Store that are compatible with Microsoft Windows as soon as possible-- BEFORE Microsoft and someone else come along. Online music buying is a subscription type of service and the sooner you get your suckers hooked the better. And for Apple every MS customer using their application and their service is one more MS customer who will probably consider other Apple products more seriously in the future.
Re:mmmm, is this good or bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know it just occurred to me... Maybe this is obvious to everyone, but once you buy something tied to Microsoft's DRM, they now lock you into a cycle of upgrading your OS, and if you don't, you risk losing all "your" purchased music.
Re:What are they trying to prevent? (Score:3, Insightful)
You had a number of choices. 1) You could've kept it, downloaded the songs, and listened to them. At least then you would've paid for music, which is the legal thing to do. 2) You could've returned it, explained why you were returning it, written a letter to the music company explain what you did, and then chosen to not buy any more copy protected CDs. If you had kept the CD and then been found out the idea of Fair Use would've been arguable. As it is you're now just a common thief, and highlighting the exact reason the RIAA is doing all of this crap.
Re:mmmm, is this good or bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
>> I doubt BuyMusic.com will succeed.
And that's a real problem. If BuyMusic.com gooes under, the RIAA will have more 'ammunition' to further their claims that music users are evil. They'll say,
"Well, we started a website where users could LEGALLY buy music, and they shot that down. There's nothing else we can do - we had the perfect solution, and it didn't work. Online music is bad."
What they surely won't realize is that their 'solution' was extremely flawed and poorly thought out. Unfortunately, the problem exists with the distribution, not the user base.
What do you mean "doesn't solve anything?" (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What are they trying to prevent? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but that is wrong. It has been said multiple times by RIAA members that downloading music is illegal EVEN if you own the CD.
2) You could've returned it
Done
explained why you were returning it
Done
written a letter to the music company explain what you did
Funny but I tried their website and you need MSIE to view it. So I was not going to buy MSWindows.
and then chosen to not buy any more copy protected CDs.
Done.
I have concert tickets for this group's next show. It cost much more than the CD. My conscience is clear.
Re:What are they trying to prevent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What are they trying to prevent? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, my question to the whole licensing thing is, if I have a license, why won't you send me a new CD for free as long as I prove my license?
Re:How does Mac do it? (Score:2, Insightful)
They don't have a Steve Jobs doing the negotiating. Remember, this man is also head of Pixar, he knows his way around the entertainment industry, he's known to be a control freak, and if something goes wrong with the iTMS (broken DRM, for example), it only affects a miniscule amount of people. Look how quickly the kabosh was put on iTunes 4.0s' ability to share playlists via Rendevous. Of course, there's a workaround for it, but again, it seems as though the RIAA might be using Apple's small market share as a test bed for DRM'd online music sales.
Just my $0.02 on the matter.
(tig)
"We do not inherit the land from our ancestors"
"We borrow it from our children"
Re:What are they trying to prevent? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're willing to believe everything the RIAA says, then the battle has already been lost. Has this claim by the RIAA ever been upheld in court?
Re:What are they trying to prevent? (Score:5, Insightful)
He sure as hell does NOT own it. He has a digital copy of it, which costs the producers NOTHING. It's not a physical thing. Breaching a license/copyright is NOT traditional theft or stealing.
It's exactly this "old economy" logic that makes our current law ineffective, unfair, and completely unsuited to modern issues such as this.
Re:mmmm, is this good or bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, that's the whole idea. It's also why they killed off IE for the mac. They want to tie you to services that require IE for Windows Longhorn. They proved that they can get away with antics like this when they 'won' the anti-trust case against the DOJ.
Re:Me too.. Me too.. (Score:4, Insightful)
1 -- Rewrite your application for an operating system used by 96% of users, with a single API for burning, playing music, and displaying graphics.
2 -- Rewrite your application for an operating system used by 3% of users, with several different APIs for burning, several different APIs for playing audio, and a half dozen graphics systems and toolkits, the majority of which are fundamentally at odds with your own tight look and feel.
Apple has proven they're not against open source. So if iTunes -- Windows takes off, EXPECT a linux version. But they're not fucking stupid.
Re:They Don't Support Mozilla (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should we?
I get paid a lot for my technical opinions. I haven't seen a dime from BuyMusic.com. Apple's working hard to get a polished interface out for PCs. One that'll have their quality level that we're all used to seeing from them. I can wait til then.
I don't owe BuyMusic.com anything, much less suggestions to keep it's crappy DRM-locked music business afloat. It's their MBAs that came up with this stuff. It didn't roll off of my desktop.
why is this "Interesting?" (Score:4, Insightful)
that's bullshit. It shouldn't have to BE that way. Macrovision sucks, plain & simple.
People shouldn't have to hack their own hardware to play movies that they have purchased legally.
Re:why is this "Interesting?" (Score:2, Insightful)
People shouldn't buy hardware that doesn't do what they want. If it doesn't do what you want, don't buy it or modify it.
Do you bitch about your car not having a big enough drink holder, and having to modify it?
Actually, legally it is theft (of services) (Score:4, Insightful)
(see also here [hagmannpi.com] for other examples of theft of services, including telephone and other telecom servcies).
DRM impact on artists (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It is your problem not ours... (Score:2, Insightful)