Canada’s New Music Download Service

For the first time, Canadians have a legal way to download digital music files from the internet. It’s a service called Puretracks, and has just made its debut. Users can go to http://www.puretracks.com and purchase songs from 99 cents, or albums from $9.99, from all the big multinational record labels, along with a number of leading independent Canadian record companies like Nettwerk, True North and Maple Music (the labels of such classic acts as Bruce Cockburn and Sarah McLachlan, and new artists like Madviolet and Swollen Members).

Puretracks offers a superior experience to the black-market file-sharing services (Kazaa and LimeWire), with one big exception-the selection at Puretracks is, as yet, inferior. Still, the company says it’s rushing to upload hundreds of thousands of music files as fast as the record companies are making them available. Selection aside, its audio quality is better than the MP3 files on offer at Kazaa and elsewhere.

It provides, among other things, a clean interface to a large selection of music, files of consistent sound quality, an easy and secure way to pay, and ancillary features that make it a real pleasure to use.

Puretracks also has one unique feature that’s a standout: a “radio” or streaming media experience that allows the user to listen to different channels (like rap or classical). If there’s a tune you hear that strikes your fancy, you can simply click “Add to Shopping Cart.” Not even iTunes, the gold standard, offers this feature.

See the full article from The Globe and Mail or start getting some sweet tunes from http://www.puretracks.com