Oh, brother... this is what we were supposed to be so worried about? Last week we mentioned that Buy.com was reportedly going to be launching its own digital music download service today, beating iTunes for Windows to market by as many as five months-- and that was allegedly cause for much hand-wringing and Rolaids-chewing. Buy.com, you see, was rumored to be copying the iTunes Music Store's 99 cents per song/no monthly fee business model, and the concern was that "iMusic" (as the service was widely expected to be named) would basically give Windows users exactly what Apple had been planning to offer-- just five months earlier.

Well, it's here, and it's not called "iMusic"-- it's called BuyMusic, which isn't quite as shameless as we'd expected. And, truth be told, there are actually some nice things about what this new service has to offer. For one thing, there's plenty of music; speculation last week centered around whether Buy.com had any licensing agreements in place with the record labels, and the answer is apparently a big fat yes, seeing as BuyMusic has some 300,000 songs from all five majors. That's a darn sight more than the 200,000 Apple had at the iTMS launch. (Yes, 100,000 is "a darn sight." You learn something new every day.) And, it turns out, BuyMusic is looking to undercut Apple's 99 cent price by over 20%, also known in the scientific community as "a hefty chunk." Songs are 79 cents, albums are $7.95. Sounds like the iTMS is boned, right?

But hooooo mama, BuyMusic! How dost thou suck rocks audibly? Let us count the ways. First and foremost, folks, be advised that BuyMusic was too lame to wrangle consistent licenses for all songs, so those 79-cent songs? You may be looking for a while before you find one. We saw lots and lots of 99-cent ones, though-- and a few that were even more expensive. (That isn't stopping BuyMusic from shouting "79 cents per song" from the rooftops, however-- and the Associated Press is only making it worse by reporting that songs are 70 cents. Fact checker, shmact checker.) Secondly, actual terms of use vary song by song (!); some songs are almost as open as iTMS offerings, but others (for example, the songs on Liz Phair) are usable on only ONE computer-- the one on which you purchased and downloaded the song. Forget about even transferring it to another computer. Compare that to Apple's "any three Macs, changeable at any time" deal.

Burning to CD-R? As few as three times for some BuyMusic songs, unlimited for iTMS tracks. How about transfer to a portable player? You can only transfer some BuyMusic tracks we looked at three times; there are no restrictions on how often you want to transfer your iTMS music, or even on the number of iPods to which you want to transfer it. And speaking of the iPod, BuyMusic uses Microsoft's WMA as its file format, so none of its 300,000 songs will play on the world's best and most popular portable digital music player. Then there's the fact that the service was down for several hours this morning; guess Apple wasn't kidding when it said that solving the bandwidth and server load issues wasn't trivial.

Of course, the fact that BuyMusic is a sad little shadow of the iTMS isn't stopping Buy.com from trying to make people think that it's just as good, and possibly even somehow related; faithful viewer Brad Weston points out that even their commercials are unabashed carbon copies of Apple's, with some not-so-subtle digs at Apple ("Music downloads for the rest of us"). (Interestingly enough, even the songs in their commercials aren't 79 cents, as BuyMusic would have people believe-- one is 99 cents and another isn't even available.) So is this is a threat to the Windows version of the iTMS? Not likely, unless BuyMusic improves dramatically by then. Then again, Windows users are used to getting jerked around by services like this, so who knows? We just hope that Apple does everything it can to distance itself from this travesty, because otherwise BuyMusic is going to make people think the iTMS for Windows sucks before it even sees the light of day.

Aside from the anti-Mac digs in the commercials, we've also got Buy.com's Scott Blum telling the press that Steve Jobs is "on the wrong platform." Hmmmmmm. Down here at the AtAT compound, we're planning to buy a bunch of music from the iTMS today in a show of support for the "wrong platform," in hopes of sending BuyMusic a message. Wouldn't it be nifty if our "wrong platform" with its measly 2.3% market share managed to make the iTMS more successful than BuyMusic on its own launch date? Maybe it's a pipe dream, but heck, there are a few albums we've been meaning to buy anyway-- might as well make it today, if there's the teensiest chance of making Blum look like even more of a jackass. Who's with us?