Update: Despite what the CBC article reports, it appears that all the tracks at this music store are toxic Windows DRM crippleware. Stay away — far away.
Isabelle sez, "I'm the director of marketing at Puretracks and a big fan of BoingBoing. I wanted to give you an update on your post about our MP3 offering that just rolled out. The first thing to mention is that we really do have 50,000 MP3s for sale in Canada . But we don't have Mac support at the moment. This is a side effect of our business reality. The entire first version of the store was based around the WMA (DRM'd) format, and it has been a monumental task switching our database and everything to support the new format. Several of these pieces, including our Download Manager, are still based on ActiveX controls and other non-Mac-friendly mechanisms so Mac users cannot purchase and downloads songs from Puretracks as of yet. But we WILL support the Macs, and the MP3 rollout is our first step towards being able to actually do that."
Puretracks, a Canadian online music store, sells everything in its catalog (The Barenaked Ladies, Broken Social Scene and Sarah McLachlan and other indie artists from many labels) as DRM-free MP3s. They have 50,000 tracks at $0.79 each.
The labels include Nettwerk Music Group of Vancouver, Arts & Crafts Productions of Toronto, the San Francisco, Calif.-based Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA) and Beggars Banquet Records of London, England.
(Thanks, Mike!)
Update: Mark sez, "The item suggests the site sells mp3s DRM-free, but if you hit their web page on a Mac, you get this screen. In which they tell you they use Windows Media and claim they're incompatble with Macs because they can't use FairPlay (ah, that old myth again!). Doesn't sound very DRM-free to me."
He's totally right. Despite what the CBC article says, it appears that every single track at Puretracks is crippled with Windows DRM.
