BuyMusic's catalogue exhibits the usual annoying omissions (no Rolling Stones, for instance) and some unusual ones (22 of 201 U2 tracks and 69 of 143 Bruce Springsteen songs listed here can't be bought).

Shopping on BuyMusic.com is best described as Soviet. Purchasing a song required using Internet Explorer for Windows, clicking through a lengthy user agreement, entering payment info, checking out, then returning to an "order summary" page to download each track.

Four songs arrived as promised, but the download link for another song I'd bought didn't work on my test computer.

Wait, did I say "bought"? As the site's Orwellian user agreement states, you never buy anything, you only license a limited right to listen to it: Songs "are sublicensed to End Users and not sold, notwithstanding use of the terms 'sell,' 'purchase,' 'order,' or 'buy' on the Site or this Agreement."

Downloads, provided as 128-bit Windows Media Audio files, enforce widely varying limits on copying to other computers, portable music players and audio CDs.

Each time you move a song to a new PC — if that's allowed at all — you'll have to enter your BuyMusic.com user name and password so Windows Media Player can fetch a license from the site.

Songs can only be copied to "SDMI-compliant" players a set number of times. (The "Secure Digital Music Initiative" was a copy-control scheme that the recording industry gave up on years ago; good luck finding out whether your player supports it.) And the litany of woe continues.

See more reviews of BuyMusic.com here and here.