BuyMusic
BuyMusic is a paid online music store run by Buy.com.
- Pricing: Cost per download (typically $0.99 per single, $9.99 per album)
- Platform(s): Windows 98 and later
- Downloading: Yes
- Burning/Copying: Yes
- Streaming: No
- Radio: No
- Format(s): Windows Media
- Digital Rights Management: Yes
- Preview: 30 seconds
- Trial: N/A
- Catalog: 304,000 songs
- Features:
The store was launched in July 2003 with 300,000 tracks available. [1] and was designed to be a iTunes Music Store because at the time of launch, Apple's store was limited to the Macintosh users and BuyMusic was the first to offer paid downloads to non-Mac users. Reportedly, the site has claimed "The World’s Largest Download Music Store." Unlike iTunes Music Store, the price of each song ranges from 80 cents to 1.99 dollars.
The technical problems related to Internet browers have irritated tech-savvy users. Any page, including a press release can be read by only users with Internet Explorer 5.0 or later and Microsoft Windows. Also, some users have noted the user interface of the store is inferior to iTunes Music Store, which uses a specialized program.
The site has provided no stats regarding the number of customers and downloads, yet Scott Blum, the founder and CEO of BuyMusic, noted "We're nowhere near Apple's [iTunes Music Store] numbers." in his 2003 December's interview.
On March 27, 2004, a web-site Spymac reported "the online store will become "integrated" with its parent site, Buy.com, within several days." [2]