It had to happen again, as it has happened since 1984. Apple innovates, the rest of the industry mimics. This time it’s Apple’s iTunes Music Store (iTMS), opened in April, that has been knocked off, albeit poorly, and with a lack of style and taste at that.

The culprit this time is Amazon.com wannabe Buy.com, who, on July 22nd, opened BuyMusic.com. Here’s what they offer: 300,000 songs (iTMS opened with 200,000), priced from 79 cents (all songs on the iTMS are 99 cents), downloadable in Windows Media Format, and only accessible with MS Internet Explorer. They also advertise the ability to burn songs onto CDs, transfer to portable audio players, and transfer to a second computer. On face value, it sounds pretty good. However, closer scrutiny proves otherwise.

Remember I said they sell songs “from” 79 cents. A look at their “Top 100 Singles” on opening day revealed but one song listed for 79 cents – the rest were all 99 cents. Two of the ten singles listed on the site today were, in fact, $1.14 each. Never trust prices described as “from”. Trying to decipher the various forms of Digital Rights Management (DRM) for each song requires hiring an attorney. Contrast this with the straight-forward DRM approach used by iTMS. And, much to the dismay of the press assembled at the debut event on the 22nd, they couldn’t manage to get any songs at all to copy onto a portable music player.

At the same event, BuyMusic.com introduced their spokesperson, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee. What better than an alleged wife beater to launch your new service with. I guess Milli Vanilli was unavailable. They even created some BuyMusic.com commercials, viewable from the web site, each one a blatant rip-off of Apple’s iTMS TV commercials.

Besides shutting out Windows users who don’t use Internet Explorer, they also shut out Windows users who have iPods, which don’t support Windows Media Format. Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, as iPods make up about one-half off the hard drive based personal music player market.

There’s good news for Windows users, though. In an interview this week, an Apple spokesman said the Windows version of the iTMS is still on track for release “before the end of the year” (no exact date was announced), and that the Windows version would have DRM very similar to the Mac version.

© 2003 Peter F. Zimowski