Los Angeles, July 22: A new Internet music download site for PCs debuting on Tuesday boasts the cheapest per-song rates yet but many of the same restrictions on copying that have stymied wider use of other music services. Although online retailer BuyMusic.com will offer a catalogue of more than 300,000 songs from the five major record labels, users of the service will not necessarily have the freedom afforded to customers of Apple`s iTunes service to transfer the music purchased to multiple computers and portable devices, or to burn it to compact discs.
BuyMusic hopes to score the sort of attention that helped drive sales for Apple Computer`s iTunes Music Store since its launch April 28.
BuyMusic founder Scott Blum called Apple CEO Steve Jobs "a visionary, but he`s on the wrong platform”. While Apple users constitute about three per cent of the personal computer market, BuyMusic is targeting the 97 per cent of people with PCs.
BuyMusic, which is based in Aliso Viejo, California, will vie for a share of that market with a handful of online music subscription services, including pressplay, Rhapsody, MusicNow and MusicNet, which have not managed to cull substantial customer traffic from the free file-sharing networks.
Bureau Report