The BuyMusic service allows users to legally download songs and albums from a variety of genres across the entire commercial and alternative musical spectrum.
So, you can, for example, choose from Alternative, Blues, Pop, Rock, Classical, Country, Hip Hop and many other types of music. At the moment the site has over 855,000 tracks to choose from so you really will be spoilt for choice.
One of the primary advantages to the BuyMusic service is that you don’t have to sign up for a subscription to use it – you can simply buy individual tracks (from $0.79) and albums (from $7.95). So, you can spend as little or as much as you like whenever you like without having to be tied to a regular commitment.
Once you buy the songs or albums you’re interested in then you can either listen to them on your computer, burn them to CD or transfer them to a portable digital audio player such as an MP3 player, for example.
The site sometimes uses 5.1 Surround Sound Technology which is a bonus for music buffs. This technology is held to produce superior audio quality at a higher than standard CD level. To make the most of this you’ll need a Surround Sound Card and 5.1 Speakers to get the best of the audio. It’s not an issue if you don’t have this – the songs will still be playable at a high quality.
There are a couple of downsides to the service. For example, BuyMusic is not compatible with MAC users so you’ll have no luck here if that is your computer of choice. If you’re looking to transfer songs to a portable device then you also need to make sure that it can cope with Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions and the WMA format.
Most new players can do this but some older models may not be able to so they may not work well or at all here. The site lists those players that are compatible if you need to check. This service won’t work with the iPod as it sells WMA tracks only.
You’ll also need to be running Internet Explorer to use the BuyMusic service due to the site’s licensing restrictions – it just doesn’t work with other browsers such as Netscape when it comes to buying and downloading.
The licensing restrictions also mean that there are pre-set limits that apply to what you can actually do with the tracks you download. For example, you can listen to the songs you download on more than one computer but you can only transfer to a portable player and burn CDs from your designated primary PC. You can only listen to the music on your designated secondary PC(s). With some tracks you’ll also be limited in how many CD burns or portable device transfers you can make so you’ll need to keep an eye on this. This will vary according to the rights restrictions of individual record labels.
If you’re an iPod user and you really want to use this service then there is a way round it. Some iPod fans join these kinds of ‘incompatible services, download music to their PCs, burn tracks to CD and then have iTunes convert them for transfer to their players.
Finally, one good tip is to think carefully about which PC you designate as your primary machine if you plan to use more than one computer to play music on. Your primary PC is the one with all the rights so this is the only PC you can actually buy music on and use all the full service capabilities.
Also see legal MP3 downloads .