Buymusic to Linux Users: Get Lost

Link: BuyMusic.com selling songs to Windows customers. (LA Times via sunspot.net)

A new downloadable music service has appeared on the net. Their motto is Get Loaded, but for Linux users it might as well be Get Lost.

The new Buymusic.com service is terribly proud of their consumer-unfriendly proprietary technology. In their breathless press release, their CEO bleats, "The new buzz phrase is no longer MP3 players, but 'digital music players' or DMPs, and refer to any device that is compliant with BuyMusic.com's format and DRM technology." Seems to me the only buzz around here is from the crack he's smoking.

DRM stands for "digital rights management," which means preventing you from doing what you wish to do with the music you've acquired. They will allow you to use the music in a Microsoft-approved fashion and only with Microsoft-approved products. Otherwise, tough luck.

As if to rub salt into the wound, users of non-proprietary operating systems are redirected to a web page that tells you, "In order to take full advantage of BuyMusic.com's offerings you must be on a Windows Operating System using Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher."

This means, of course, I will continue performing illegal music downloads on peer-to-peer networks. This is not my preferred solution. I find the music selection on peer-to-peer networks to be quite limited outside the mainstream genres, the audio quality often poor, and the download reliability very quirky.

I want to give the record labels my money, if they'd only try to sell me something I wanted.