As we reported (http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=6444) a few days ago, Buy.com has unleashed its online music service called BuyMusic.com (http://www.buymusic.com/), offering songs at $0.79 each and $7.95 for a full album, beating those rates from indirect competitor Apple's iTunes.

And when I say indirect competitor, I mean it, BuyMusic relies a lot on Microsoft technology, its infrastructure is based on .Net, it's catered to Windows users only, it features Windows Media Player as a preferred playback program, and hear this... works for Internet Explorer users only (http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5052388.html?tag=lh)!
Anyway, we will further report on how BuyMusic business goes in the coming weeks, Buy.com executives I'm sure are expecting iTunes-like success at the very least with no competition on the Windows side yet.

Update: I'm hearing that not all songs & albums are subject to the same limitations or even prices (which is bad), for example while some albums can be burned/transferred unlimited times, there are others limited to 5 or so burns... in the other hand, iTunes works on a flat deal which IMO works better.

I finally managed to test BuyMusic.com on an XP machine...

http://tingilinde.typepad.com/starstuff/2003/07/more_on_buymusi.html

Originally posted by TS | Julio
As we reported (http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=6444) a few days ago, Buy.com has unleashed its online music service called BuyMusic.com (http://www.buymusic.com/), offering songs at $0.79 each and $7.95 for a full album.


...Or, I can go onto Kazaa, and get songs for $0.00 each, and albums for the bargain basement price of $0.00 !!! ;)

If you have broadband, and know a little about P2P, IRC, and so forth, all you have to do is think about a song, and you can have it.

Indeed, the biggest problem is finding out who sang what, what was the name of that song I heard and liked but had no idea who even sang, etc.

Now, a service that catered to that I WOULD pay for!

Still, this is good news that people are coming around to realising that the current price of music is ridiculous, a total con and a rip off, and that consumers will not stand for it when they have technological alternatives....

I agree, these prople have been ripping us off for decades with everything, just to get themselves rich. I understand they work hard to get where they are, but seriously do they really need to make that much money per cd made? It is like professional athletes, I would think you can get by on a few million a year, yet they still ask for 8-15 million a year. Why? If they love the game just get enough to get you by and maybe a little more.