iTunes Music Store Has Competition - Page 4

BuyMusic won't release figures, but "it's not millions," Blum says.

When USA Today attempted to get an answer/solution to the unplayable tracks from BuyMusic.com, they received an email that said, "We are unable to provide technical assistance after you have downloaded the music... to your primary computer. In addition, we are unable to credit you back for failed or damaged copies once you have successfully downloaded the music."

Jody Whitesides, a musician, wrote to us about BuyMusic.com's acquisition of content:


I'm an artist that is about to be brought to the Apple iTunes Music Store. Of course I recently heard about BuyMusic so I decided to point my Mac browser at it (with Javascript turned off you can see the site).

I did a search for one of my old CD's that will be going onto iTunes and It turns out my CD was there on BuyMusic.com. As were the CD's of several other bands that I'm friends with. All of whom were not contacted about being placed for sale there.

Here's what I've deduced... BuyMusic.com (which I will refer to as BM) got their "vast" music library of 300,000 plus songs from a company called the Orchard. The Orchard is a distribution company that has consistently shafted artists by not paying them for CD's sold nor returning unsold CD's or canceling contracts. So, without the express consent of what is likely all of the Orchards catalog, BM has put it up for sale at the bargain price of $.79 a song.

So now, they can tout they're selling tracks at $.79 and they can say they have a library of music of over 300,000 songs. But what they don't tell you is that it comes from musicians/bands that were not asked for permission, and who will likely not see a penny of any sale made through BM. By their very own site policy they are committing copyright infringement. They have done this to lure PC/windows users to their site in hopes to sell the few major label aquired songs they do have, at a price that is much higher than Apple's $.99.

I'm currently looking into legal means to have my music removed from their site and strongly encourage users to not browse BM's site nor purchase from it.

From the BLOG report
This had been in the trackback on the original post on Scriptygoddess but it was important enough to be brought into this post. Privacy policies are something I don't usually pay attention to but really should, but what buymusic.com has in theirs is just wrong. Jenett linked to Stereoboy's post where he pointed out this little tidbit from their policy: "we may disclose, sell, trade, or rent your Personally Identifiable Information to others without your consent". Not cool.