Slate: New Apple Clones

Slate's Rob Walker isn't impressed by BuyMusic.com's knock-offs of Apple's iMS TV commercials:

... In other words, they're basically the same ads. (The only thing they seem to have overlooked is calling their service BuyTunes, to get the rhyme.)

This is odd. So much so that I kept re-watching the BuyMusic ads to try and figure out what I was missing. Is there a hidden critique here? A satire? Not really. They're just knockoffs. It's as if, by borrowing the look and feel of Apple's ads, BuyMusic is explicitly interested in underscoring that its service is a copycat. Why?

New Apple Clones: There's a reason those ads for BuyMusic.com seem so familiar.