MacMinute.com points to this Associated Press report which announces the launch of Buy.com's entry into the downloadable-music world.
The new service (BuyMusic.com) promises cheaper rates than Apple's iTunes Music store... with albums at $7.95 and $0.70 for individual songs. The catalog also features over 300,000 songs from the five major record labels... however, the songs come with more restrictions than their iTunes-counterpart.
- Blum was not able to obtain uniform licensing rights from the record labels and artists. As a result, different songs on BuyMusic have different restrictions for how often, if at all, they may be burned onto CDs or copied to other PCs or portable music devices.
Songs for the new service use the Windows Media Format.
While the article hints that Steve Jobs may have been solely responsible in the relatively liberal restrictions to the iTunes music library, there have been rumors of concern that some label executives may be timid about granting the same deal for even Apple's music store for Windows.
