By NEIL STRAUSS

Published: January 1, 2004


OS ANGELES, Dec. 31 — The last year has seen an explosion of pay music-downloading services. Some have been successes, like Apple's iTunes Music Store, with 1.5 million downloads a week. Others, like BuyMusic, are plagued by complaints from users. But there is another site that has iTunes Music Store and BuyMusic beat: Easy Music Download, which has a greater profit margin than iTunes Music Store and probably a greater percentage of dissatisfied users than BuyMusic.

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On its Web site, Easy Music Download offers unlimited downloads from a catalog of more than 700,000 songs for an annual fee of $21.95. Theoretically, one could own tens of thousands of songs for the same price as just 22 tracks from the iTunes store. If it sounds too good to be true, that's because it is.

"When everything hit the fan about people being charged for illegal music found on their machines, that was just the get-up-and-go I needed to fork out the cash for the files I wanted," Angela Tennant, a 25-year-old student from South Carolina who subscribed to Easy Music Download, said in an interview conducted via e-mail. "I just ended up paying up to the wrong people, and now I'm just aggravated, downright jaded, and it won't happen again."

What Ms. Tennant and others found when they subscribed to Easy Download Music was not a song-selling service at all, but merely information on how to download file-sharing services like Kazaa, which provide access to the unrestricted swapping that Ms. Tennant was hoping to avoid.

Roderick Dorman, chief litigation counsel for Sharman Networks, which owns the Kazaa Media Desktop, said that Easy Download Music was issued a cease-and-desist letter.

Many of the services state in their terms of service that the subscription pays for recommendations and technical support for free, easily available software. Easy Music Download is not alone in this market: at least a dozen other sites, like mp3perfect.com, mp3entertainment .com, mp3downloadhq.com and my-free-music.com, also sell access and help with free file-sharing services. All these sites look similar, and some have even copied text from other sites. But they vary in the extent to which they inform customers about the service they provide: some are designed to look like legitimate subscription-music services while others clearly state upfront that subscribers are paying for information and assistance only.

"Since August of 2003 we've been identifying what we view as scam sites, which are trading on the technology and offerings of Sharman Networks and in our view defrauding consumers by failing to disclose the actual service they provide," Mr. Dorman said. Several other cease-and-desist letters had been sent, he said, and he is "exploring with governmental authorities whether the conduct of these sites is criminal and is the appropriate subject of criminal law enforcement."

Through an e-mail address provided by an Internet consultant who did not want to be identified, the owner of Easy Music Download was reached. He identified himself as Ganesh Singh, and said he was from Hyderabad, India. "We tell people our Web site shows how to use file-sharing software," he wrote. "Other Web sites do not, so they are misleading." He declined to say how many users Easy Music Download has.

To learn more about these sites and their intended purpose, e-mail messages were sent and phone calls made to the owners of seven similar sites. Most e-mail messages remain unanswered; at mp3perfect.com, a flustered man answered the phone, listened to the questions, and said his superior should answer them. But his superior never called back.

The seventh e-mail message led to a telephone interview with a 25-year-old woman from Florida, who owns the subscription services imusicshare.com and mp3run .com. Speaking on condition of anonymity, she provided some perspective on the Web sites.

She said that she worked at an Internet billing company, and conceived of her file-sharing-support sites when she noticed that such sites did well financially. She started iMusicShare three months ago, she said, and gets 20 to 30 new subscribers a day.

That site is not meant to be at all misleading, she said. "It's for people who have no clue what to do on the Web as far as downloading," she continued. "They don't know what to do and how to begin, so they're willing to pay for help."

So the service provides subscribers with links to download free programs like WinMX and iMesh, supplies them with user guides to these programs, and gives 24-hour technical support, which few file-sharing services offer reliably.

She said that about 15 percent of her imusicshare subscribers request refunds. It is in a company's best interest to keep refunds and complaints to a minimum, she said, because they will affect a merchant's online reliability rating. "I think that there are a lot of people out there who really depend on us," she said. "There are people who are 70 and 90, and have no clue how to download."

Depending on one's perspective, sites like Easy Music Download are angels of file-sharing mercy, providing an easy way for Internet neophytes to navigate the morass of song- and movie-swapping sites, or they are clever parasites, feeding off the good intentions of those wishing to pay for their music.

One result for those who hold the latter view is that the services may be driving people back to Kazaa. "Web sites like easymusicdownload .com make honest people feel as if they are punished for trying to do the right thing," Ms. Tennant said. "And how have I gotten my music since I have been scammed? Let's just say I don't risk being hung out to dry anymore.
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