adamyntium

Yet more music industry incompetence

How would you like to get CDs for just $7.99… “as easy as 1-2-3!”

Sounds tempting, right? It’s understandable that folks noting BuyMusic.com’s advertising about “79 cent tracks, $7.99 albums” would be excited.

The reality, however, is quite disappointing, even infuriating.

BuyMusic is a lousy service

Welcome to the real (awful) BuyMusic.

Note that it’s difficult, perhaps even impossible, to actually find any song for 79 cents. Or maybe you wanted “Minnie Mouse sings Nothing But a Hound Dog?” (okay, I made that up, but I was actually UNABLE to find any clip for 79 cents!)

Have fun with an incredibly inefficient, arduous set of obstacles to download and activate an album.

Note that the service supports only ONE CD burning plugin.

And if that doesn’t work on your system and you’ve already paid for an album? Tough cookies, says BuyMusic customer service, as Jennifer found out the hard (and expensive) way. That’s YOUR problem, not ours, BuyMusic insists… so forget about a refund.

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Looking for a much more enjoyable and customer-centric online service? Try Listen.com’s Rhapsody. I’ve also appreciated good customer service so far with PressPlay, though I haven’t yet tried burning CDs with either service.

In the meantime, please DO copy the “Get Screwed” graphic above (which is a take off on their sophomoric “Get Loaded” logo) and post it on your site or your blog. Feel free to link either to Jennifer’s page directly or to this page if you prefer.

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Edited to add: Check out Ken’s detailed list of why anyone and everyone should run away from BuyMusic.com. In particular, there’s this little gem embedded deep in BM’s “privacy policy”:

We may disclose, sell, trade, or rent your Personally Identifiable Information to others without your consent

Charming, eh?

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RELATED ENTRIES
– Review of the Musicmatch Download Service
– A look at Listen.com’s Rhapsody service

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Adam Lasnik

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One response to “Yet more music industry incompetence”

  1. Craig Avatar
    Craig

    (also left this on Jennifer’s page – ScriptyGoddess)
    Regarding BuyMusic.com – which is now currently merging with Buy.com…  I know I’m a little late in this game, having been using BuyMusic.com for about 8 months now, but ran into this issue just today and have basically been told by BuyMusic.com/Buy.com “nothing we can do”.
    While they mention that they are not responsible should your system be lost or damaged, they don’t mention UPGRADING your system.  I just upgraded my “primary” music system (CPU, RAM and video card), and suddenly, none of my downloaded music would play!  Each time I tried, it attempted to login and “reaquire” my license.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.  After some research, I determined that tracks that were allowed to be on more than one system were “relicensing” while tracks permitted on only ONE system would throw an error.  BuyMusic’s system was seeing this, my primary computer, as a new/second/secondary computer!  I can’t relicense many tracks, and the ones that WERE successful are acting like they’re on a secondary system – aside from listening to them, I can’t burn or do anything else with them!  BEWARE WHEN UPGRADING YOUR SYSTEM – YOU MAY LOSE YOUR MUSIC’S LICENSES!  So far, after having my e-mail complaints escalated to the “expert queue”, I’ve been pretty much left with “nothing we can do”.  Am looking to shoot e-mails to the BBB and Consumer Reports…  This is pathetic!

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