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Zunior.com sells albumbs in FLAC for an extra $2 each.

Know any good sites that of course will have samples of the music to help guide me?

Jamendo, Magnatune, Bandcamp, Amie Street, TheSixtyOne and Zunior; to name a few.

CBC Radio 3 is a great place to hear Canadian Indie music. A lot of the stuff they play is available to buy on http://www.zunior.com/ or, less likely, http://www.emusic.com/

It's all moot anyway, since no download service (that I know of) besides allofmp3 will give you better than about 192kbps lossy audio

• Audio Lunchbox allows artists to offer tracks in a variety of formats, FLAC among them. No mainstream artists, but plenty of interesting stuff to find.
• Zunior (no relation to the Zune) is similar -- they offer FLAC for a premium.
• iTunes Plus offers 256kpbs AAC (MPEG-4's Advanced Audio Codec) tracks without DRM -- Lossy, but better than 192kbps. Right now it's only EMI Music's catalog, but rumor has it that will be expanding.

For the regular price ($8.88 CDN per album) you get 192kbps non-DRM'd MP3's. For $2.00 CDN extra, you get the same album in FLAC format. Their entire catalog is in non-DRM format and they have been doing it this way for a lot longer than Apple. As an added benefit, they a support all platforms equally, so you can use Windows, OS X or even Linux to browse and buy music.

Though puretracks may have just dropped DRM, they're not the only company in Canada to offer that. Another company called Zunior (zunior.com) is doing the same but they take it a step further and offer downloads in FLAC format. They also include album images and such in the download. That's the way to do it. I wish every company would treat their music downloads this way. People have high-speed connections now, why not offer high-quality audio? I don't want to pay $8-10 for MP3s when I can get the CD for nearly the same price but I'll pay it for a guarantee of high audio quality and liner notes, with the ease of an immediate download.

http://www.Zunior.com

I'm not affiliated, other than being a very happy customer.

Good list, a couple of addendums and a comment.

First, Neko Case is actually American, although she seems (to my ears) to be quite heavily influenced by her Canadian connections.

My additions to your list:

Violet Archers
Final Fantasy (aka: Owen Pallett)
Egger
Tamara Williamson

As an added bonus, I'd like to point out (again, and again) that most of this great music can be bought in FLAC or MP3 format from Zunior!

Good list, a couple of addendums and a comment.

First, Neko Case is actually American, although she seems (to my ears) to be quite heavily influenced by her Canadian connections.

My additions to your list:

Violet Archers
Final Fantasy (aka: Owen Pallett)
Egger
Tamara Williamson

As an added bonus, I'd like to point out (again, and again) that most of this great music can be bought in FLAC or MP3 format from Zunior!

Do have an honest counter argument or is insulting him the best you can come up with?

If it weren't for Apple, Creative Labs or Sony or Microsoft would be the #1 DRM'd music vendor, and we'd be bitching about their implementation instead. And the honest ones among us who dislike DRM no matter who makes it will still be doing what we have always done, buy our music from cool non-DRM'd labels and occasionally in that old fashioned "CD" format.

Great music in MP3 or FLAC. *This* is the way to run a music store, which is why they get ALL my business these days, no more "Apple knows what's best for you" crap. And for me, the lack of Top-40 schlock is also great feature.

PS: Besides being a customer and a fan, I am not affiliated with Zunior.com

Support Canadian music, especially when you can buy un-DRM'd MP3's online from some of Canada's greatest musicians so easily and so cheaply!

Sure there is.