Buy.com put the iTunes Music Service in its sights this week with the launch of BuyMusic.com. TV commercials for the new Windows-only service blatantly copy the iTunes ads, and BuyMusic.com uses a “music for the rest of us” slogan, flaunting its more popular platform (Windows), broader selection (advertising their ~300,000 songs as “The World’s Largest Download Music Store”), and lower price (79¢/track.)

Naturally, they leave out the attached strings: sure, some songs are 79¢ apiece, but not all. Similarly, the rights that you buy with a track vary depending on the respective record company’s whims. Oh, and did I say buy? Perish the thought, as Ars helpfully notes in a BuyMusic license excerpt:

All downloaded Content is sublicensed to End Users and not sold, notwithstanding use of the terms “sell,” “purchase,” “order,” or “buy” on the Site or this Agreement.

I guess SubLicenseMusic.com wasn’t catchy enough.

UPDATE: You can download the Audioslave album from BuyMusic for $12.49. You’re then allowed to burn it at most 5 times and/or transfer it to portable players at most 5 times. Why is this better than spending 99¢ more to get the actual CD from plain ol’ Buy.com? You got me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2003 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Miscellany.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.