 Online retailer Buy.com, which sells computers, books, gadgets,
CDs and DVDs, adds downloads to its mix today. BuyMusic.com will stock
350,000 songs for as little as 79 cents each, though most sell for 99
cents or $ 1.19. All can be transferred to portables or burned to
CDs.
Apple's iTunes Music Store, which
has been open since April, proved there's money to be made in online
music, even in competition with free, proliferating pirate swap services.
About 6.5 million songs have been sold, but only to the Macintosh world,
which represents about 3% of total computer users.
Others giants, including AOL,
Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon and Wal-Mart, have eyed Apple's success and
promised similar services for Windows users this year. BuyMusic.com is
first out of the gate.
Before Apple, industry-backed music
services charged monthly fees. Though the services don't release figures,
analysts say they've drawn fewer than 300,000 subscribers because of fees
and restrictive rules '” some songs are unplayable if you don't renew your
subscription, and you pay extra to burn tunes to CD or move them to
portables.
BuyMusic's songs are fully portable,
but there's a catch: None can be moved to Apple's iPod, which has 50% of
the digital music player market, though they do work with players from
Creative Labs, Rio, Lyra and others. |
