BuyMusic is a paid online music store run by Buy.com.
- Pricing: Cost per download (typically $0.99 per single, $9.99 per album)
- Platform(s): Windows 98 and later
- Downloading: Yes
- Burning/Copying: Yes
- Streaming: No
- Radio: No
- Format(s): Windows Media
- Digital Rights Management: Yes
- Preview: 30 seconds
- Trial: N/A
- Catalog: 304,000 songs
- Features:
The store was launched in July 2003 with 300,000 tracks available [1] and was designed to compete with iTunes Music Store because at the time of launch, Apple's store was limited to the Macintosh users, and BuyMusic was the first to offer paid downloads to non-Mac users. Reportedly, the site has claimed "The World’s Largest Download Music Store." Unlike iTunes Music Store, the price of each song ranges from 80 cents to 1.99 dollars.
The site has extreme limitations on what users can browse it. It won't allow anyone not using Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer 5.0 or greater to even view the songs available. Even users that meet the stated requirements can encounter trouble--clicking the main "click here" link routinely crashes some user's IE 5.5 browsers.
Before the Spring 2004 integration with its parent site, Buy.com[2], users that didn't meet the stated requirements couldn't even access static content such as press releases. Since the integration, all users can access all of buy.com, including corporate information, such as press releases. Users of OSes other than Windows, and browsers other than IE, are only blocked if they click on "Music Downloads" in the left navigation menu, which leads to the original buymusic.com content. Also, some users have noted the user interface of the store is inferior to iTunes Music Store, which uses a specialized program.
The site has provided no stats regarding the number of customers and downloads, yet Scott Blum, the founder and CEO of BuyMusic, noted "We're nowhere near Apple's [iTunes Music Store] numbers." in his December, 2003 interview.