Pig pile on Apple, everybody! Now that it's five months out of the gate, the iTunes Music Store is attracting scores of copycats and coattail-riders like swarms of dumb, lazy moths to a flame. You may recall that BuyMusic.com was the first such forgery on the scene, but we're not entirely sure it counts, because despite Scott Blum's shameless attempts to pass off his service as the Windows version of the iTMS, because of its many, many inherent flaws it was no closer in execution to Apple's intuitive and customer-pleasing creation than Rodin's "The Thinker" is to this painting of a monkey on a toilet.

Now, though, things are really starting to heat up a little. MusicMatch, the company that makes the player software that currently ships with the iPod for Windows users, has just launched its own pay-per-download music service-- and lest you think that MusicMatch Downloads is going to be just another wart-ridden BuyMusic.com, we've got to say, it looks like a far better photocopy of the iTMS than BuyMusic could ever hope to be. If you were waiting for a time to start panicking over Apple's continued absence from the Windows music downloads market, now is probably as good a time as any.

Only a few days and the experiences of actual customers will tell us for sure, of course, but right now, it looks like MusicMatch has indeed swiped just about all of the iTMS's finer points that BuyMusic left out. First of all, just as the iTMS is a feature built into iTunes 4, MusicMatch Downloads is fully integrated into the latest version of MusicMatch Jukebox-- no need to download songs via a web browser, as with BuyMusic.com. (The fact that MusicMatch Jukebox is already used by some 40,000,000 Wintellians probably makes Apple a little squeamish, especially since that includes every Windows user who bought an iPod.) Songs are a uniform $.99, most albums are $9.99, and unlike BuyMusic.com's ludicrous nonuniform content usage restrictions, MusicMatch Downloads allows all songs to be played on up to three different computers, burned to an unlimited number of discs, and transferred to a portable player an unlimited number of times... just like the iTMS.

Okay, so that's all pretty depressing. How about a little bit of Bright Side to spread some cheer over your Monday? For one thing, Apple's still got a slight advantage in that the iPod won't play MusicMatch's Microsoft-format WMA files, so if Wintel users want to use the most popular portable player on the market, they'll be going iTunes instead. And better still, since MusicMatch's new iTMS ripoff offers usage rights that are suspiciously identical to those previously pioneered by the Mac-only iTMS, you can bet your sweet bippy that iTMS for Windows is awfully close to release. Remember, the single major hurdle with Apple's plan to take its service cross-platform was that only two of the five big record labels had agreed at the time to allow broad usage rights on the Windows platform; imagine if songs purchased via the iTMS for Windows had usage limitations like BuyMusic.com. Eeeeewwwwwww.

But since MusicMatch now has use-on-three-computers, activate-and-deactivate-computers-whenever, burn-all-you-want, and transfer-to-players-all-you-want rights available for all songs and its service is Windows-only, and since BuyMusic.com is reportedly also about to inherit those same usage rights, that means that the big labels have finally agreed to Apple's terms. It's just a shame that Apple did all the work and others are going to benefit from it first, but hey, since when is that unusual?

Rumors placed the actual port of iTunes for Windows at "darn near finished" a while ago, so we bet that it was primarily license negotiations holding back its release. In face, we're betting that Apple will ship iTunes for Windows any minute now.

Yup. Any minute.

(cough)

Well, we'll let you know.