Music File Licenses
When you purchase and download music from BuyMusic.com, your music files are accompanied by a license with certain restrictions. The music files are encrypted with SDMI license technology to be sure that they are used according to your license restrictions. (See Minimum System Requirements.)
IMPORTANT: Make sure you mean to buy your music from your primary computer (for example: your home computer) so that it contains your primary license. The licenses are non-transferable. Example: You cannot buy your music on your home machine and then transfer your primary license to your work machine. The computer you buy from becomes the primary computer with the primary license for that song. You can only copy music from your primary machine via your primary license. See below for details.
Downloading, Transferring, and Burning
Each record label has control over these license restrictions including the number of times you may:
transfer your songs to another computer(s)
transfer your songs to an approved portable digital media player.
burn your songs to CD
BuyMusic.com complies with each record label and adjusts the SDMI license on each of your music downloads accordingly.
Two Types of Licenses: Primary and Secondary
There are two types of licenses: Primary and Secondary. The primary license is downloaded to the machine you used to buy your music (for example your home computer). Your primary license enables you to copy your music from your primary computer to your digital media players and to burn it to your CDs as many times as the record label allows.
If you download a secondary license, you do so onto a secondary computer (for example your work computer). Your secondary license enables you ONLY to listen to your music on your secondary computer. A secondary license does NOT allow you to copy your music from your secondary computer to your digital media players or to burn it to your CDs.
Make sure you mean to buy your music from your primary computer so that it contains your primary license. The licenses are non-transferable. You cannot buy your music on your work machine and then transfer your primary license to your home machine. The computer you buy from becomes the primary computer with the primary license for that song.
Before You Buy: Icons Show Number of Copies Allowed
When you download songs, your licenses are downloaded too. When you lookup a song, notice that each song displays icons showing the number of times it may be copied via the primary license.
_ The Compact Disk icon shows the number of times the song can be downloaded to compact disks.
_ The Headphone icon shows the number of times you can transfer the song to digital media players.
_ The Computer icon shows the number of computers you can download your music to in total.
The icons apply only to your primary license on your primary computer. The icons do not apply to the secondary license on your secondary computer. You cannot use the secondary license to copy music at all.
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My CPU usage is really high when I play music. Can I free that up?
When your computer is decrypting the WMA file, your CPU usage will normally be very high. However, you can lower your CPU usage during playback if you turn off your visualizations and if you set your player to compact mode. See Windows Media Player Help page for details.
Uhuh. Well you're tied to using Media Player, Explorer and Windows, and the DRM is a lot tighter so there's much less you can do with your files. So in a nutshell, you guys are right - buymusic sucks. However theres the "it works on windows and its cheaper than the mac one" issue. Apple better get iTunes ported quick and it has to be better than Quicktime for Windows is. All my PC friends hate QT and to be honest, I can't blame them, the Windows version is nowhere nears as good as the OSX one. All the signs are looking good for iTMS, once the Windows and European versions launch it should be a bit of a coup for Apple. On the other hand, remember Beta video. Fingers crossed.
