In response to my previous post about problems with Buy Music, Greg Pierce points out this ArsTechnica article pointing out that BuyMusic.Com is even worse than I had originally thought.
Apple did the smart thing and negotiated the same rights deal with the various companies it dealt with. On the one hand, this has meant that its music store doesn’t include some artists. BuyMusic negotiated different rights deals with different companies in order to increase the number of tracks it could sell, but also making it ridiculously complex for users to track exactly what they’re getting for their money,
different songs/albums carry different use restrictions. Using DRM, publishers can put limitations on how many times you can download a file, burn it to a CD, and put it on a SDMI-compliant player. Browsing around I found that most songs/albums had unlimited burns and player transfers, with one (initial download). But if you want to buy the latest album by Audioslave, be prepared to put up with only 5 burns and 5 transfers. Some music can’t be burned or transferred to a player at all!
Not only would that be a nightmare to track, but come on — I can only transfer some tracks to a portable device a limited number of times. How stupid is that restriction?
As ArsTechnica points out, the whole BuyMusic moniker borders is deceptive since you can’t actually buy any music from the site. Instead, as its user agreement puts it,
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.
That sounds like a Monty Python routine.