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Puretracks.com Enters The Online Music Fray
Greedo writes "Two articles, one from the CBC and one from The Globe and mail report that puretracks.com has launched, offering 99-cent (Canadian dollars) downloads for music tracks. As a Canadian who wishes Apple would get their iTunes Music Store available to non-US customers, this may be the alternative I've been waiting for. Although I think they only offer .WMV files (boo)."
Check out
mgoyer's " rough review" of the service.
I saw "Pure Tracks" and thought, "Sweet, 44.1/16bit uncompressed or losslessly compressed tracks, unencumbered by DRM at last!" Sigh. Not-so-pure-tracks is what it is.
WMV is windows media video.
P is for PEDANT
R for Ridiculous
O for Ostentatious
J for Just Kidding
HTTP 403.9 - Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
.wma, not .wmv... unless they're serving up video as well, but since I can't get to the site, I don't know ;)
Internet Information Services
And I think you mean
get nemulator
I live in Canada, and I thought this sounded cool for a minute. But if it's not an mp3, that's no fun.
From their Help page, linked to on the home page:
"Puretracks.com is available to Canadian residents only."
And there was me thinking that the internet was international. Yeah, yeah, IP boundaries and all that but is it that hard to set up an international online music store?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Since there's almost no way that server will hold up:
Puretracks, Canada's first online music store launched today. Thoughts:
Tracks: $0.99CDN
Albums: $9.99CDN
Approx 175,000 tracks. Supposed to double in size in a month.
Question: How much does the artist get?
Pages do not render properly in Mozilla
Has a wishlist - That's a good idea
Server intermittenly crashes (they're using Microsoft) (hello load testing). I know Apple's iTunes Music Store also had issues the first day but this being a Canadian site I'd expect their traffic to be several magnitudes less.
Has some exclusive tracks
Burning: 'You can burn your music downloads to CD 3 times.'
Portable players: 'You can transfer your music downloads an unlimited number of times to 3 separate portable devices'
Portability: You cannot take songs to work or transfer between notebook and desktop machines at home. 'This license will only be active on the computer to which the song is downloaded. For this reason, it is important that you purchase and download your music using your primary computer. Once you have downloaded a song, you will be able to listen, burn, or transfer from only that computer. '
Uses WMA format: 192kbps
Works only with Windows machines
Can only listen to (some) tracks on devices which support Windows Media. Does not work with iPods the most popular portable music device
No indicator of how long the preview is
They charge GST+PST
First time users get a free track with their first purchase
You have to download and install a Moontaxi Media plugin to download your purchases
You can download and pay for just one track.
My order number was 4231. Did they reset order numbers after beta testing?
Confirmation email:
We strongly recommend that your burn your new tracks to a back-up CD for safe keeping, in the event that you experience PC failure in the future. Please see help for details. Blank RW CD discs can be purchased at any computer store
Note that there is a levy on blank CDs so you're paying for your music twice if you backup onto CDs.
Shows downloads progress but not the speed/rate of transfer. Feels slow.
After downloading and pressing listen in the download manager I got an error saying that I did not have the license for the song. So I click on the help link and it gives me a HTTP 403 - Forbidden error.. Hmmm. But when I launch it from WMP it works fine.
Can non-Canadian people pay and download the songs?
Conclusion: I will not use this service since it does not support my iPod.
Coverage elsewhere:
Fluff Globe article: Canadian firm launchs digital music service
6:11:50 PM [10 comments]
Today's Globe and Mail:
Students anxious about job market:
Half of the university students polled and four in 10 college students say they anticipate having trouble finding a job.
Yes we are anticipating having trouble finding a job. It doesn't help that everyone is also moving development offshore: IT jobs contracted from far and wide
Editorial by Brain Robertson the head of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, Don't torch musicians' incomes, burn media piracy:
Canada's music industry has been the hardest hit of any country in the world by illegal file sharing. Retail sales are down by more than $425-million since 1999. In the last year, staff layoffs at record companies have topped 20 per cent. (About 45,000 people are dependent, directly or indirectly, on the recording industry in Canada.) If this decline continues, there will be less money to invest in Canadian artists and Canadian music.
Remember who Brain Robertson represents; record labels. As a result he does not care about the musicians; he is more concerned about staff layoffs. His article also fails to mention the vast sum of money collected by the CPCC in the form of a levy/tarrif that has largely gone un-distributed.
What a great seller! I can easily browse their site, but whenever I try to preview a song, I get :
/player/player_new.asp, line 18
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e31'
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Timeout expired
I wonder if Apple's failure to bring iTMS to market in non-US nations is due to the patent out there described here. If that is the case, given the slim profit margin in selling music online, I'd have to think any non-US ventures would be doomed to failure until either all the companies buy (eat) one another or go bankrupt, or somehow the patent is challeneged.
"It's a win-win combination that's a proven success south of the border and promises to help strengthen Canada's music scene."
--Denise Donlon, president of Sony Music Canada
Could anybody name anything other than iTunes that sells music (single tracks) over the internet and makes money?
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
Now you're (collectively) moaning that this new Canada only service is WMA (and hence windows) only, even though there are workarounds to transcode (yeah lose quality blah blah) to MP3 or OGG good enough for walkmanlike headphones.
Commercial stuff like this will always be led out by simple economic decisions. Like how much the whole infrastructure costs. Even if that means dopey in IT puts WMA because it's already built in to the solution they've already been committed to forever. Or whatever.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Not only is Kazaa/Grok/etc free, you get a much better product: useful standard MP3 files.
With iTunes and this Pure DRM service, you pay a lot more and get a lot less (non-standard hard-to-use WMV, Apple format, etc files).
So much for the phrase "you get what you pay for".
Uses WMV and looks like crap using Mozilla. Written in ASP.
The first question with any service like this is "how can I actually listen to the files I bought on my MP3 player?"
Apparently, with iTunes, you can burn them onto a CD and then rip them to MP3 (a kludge, but if you use a CD-RW for it, I guess it can become kind of routine).
How does one do the same sort of thing with this Purely Canadian service?
I wrote them a nice note, complimenting them on the site design, navigation, organization, etc; I was even encouraging about the selection, saying that while they didn't have everything, they had more than enough to encourage at least $100 a year out of me.
Then I said, "but of course, since you only support Windows and I have a Linux box and an MP3-only portable player, I won't be giving you any business at all"...and how sorry I was about that.
Best I could do....
for expecting your IIS webserver to standup to a *real* load level. /.ing
I mean come on, they server audio to make money yet their web server can't handle a
That's just poor design, whatever platform you use.
Now if they actually only use wmv, that would suck for all those who can't/won't browse them.
Non-MP3 DRM enabled. Nuff said.
How can they compete with mp3's that can be acquired for free, have no restriction AND can play on any platform (Windows, Mac, Unix) or portable device?
To attract consumers to their service they must have some value added service. All I can see is less value with all the DRM restrictions and the propietary format they chose. I own three portable mp3 players (one is an iPOD) and none of them can play this WMA crap.
Give me a true alternative to P2P applications, a reasonable price (a lot of their albums are over $10CND) and I will use a paying service for sure(I currently use eMusic but it's only good for indy music).
For the record, as several other have said it:
If it's not MP3, it won't play on my portable player, and so it's useless to me at any price.
I'm not paying for DRM. If you can't trust me as a customer, you can't have me for a customer.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Now that puretracks is /.'d, will the music downloads run at a snail's pace? Hopefully not.
I think this is EXACTLY what we need to combat the RIAA. Cheap songs, cheap albums. Not only that, you may find artists putting more top-notch tracks on their albums, since people will likely pick and choose the songs they want.
If more online stores like this opened up, I think we'd see a lot less illegal p2p (not that I care).
Everyone and their pet monkey is going to want to run an mp3 downloading service now.
Do we really need an article on each and every new startup?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Actually, according to xe.com, $1 U.S. is about $0.75 Canadian.
Live mid-market rates as of 2003.10.15 14:20:31 GMT.
0.99 CAD = 0.748311 USD
1 CAD = 0.755870 USD 1 USD = 1.32298 CAD
if you're canadian, let them know you would not consider buying anything from them in their current format.
i know i did. as someone else posted, if you can't trust me as a customer, you can't have me as one
I'm starting a new pr0n pictures site where all the images will be available in BMP format only.
I'd love to know how this business model and song format was agreed upon in whatever meetings the collection of innovative geniuses at puretracks.com had leading up to the site's launch. Who would start off by limiting themselves so severely out of the gate?
Granted, this currently only applies to sneakernet and the application of this argument to peer-to-peer networks has yet to be tested in court. This is IMHO a very important point that needs to be clarified in Canadian law for the good of the public. Otherwise, everyone there runs the risk of having to double-pay for every song they get online -- once to download the song, and once again to burn it onto CD.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
The first company who actually has any of the songs i want from any of the artists I like gets my business. I've basically tried Emusic, which actually did have good stuff. But MusicMatch had almost nothing, only top40 stuff it seemed (which you can just pick up from a music store or download from Kazaa or eDonkey). Makes me wonder if Itunes is/will be just as bad.
Is only part of the DRM restrictions they have.
However, it might be illegal: in Canada we pay a levy on all recordable media which goes towards paying artists for copies of music made (even if you use the disc for data!).
Additionally it is perfectly legal for someone to borrow your CD and burn a copy of it. You cannot burn a copy and give it to them, though, as that would be considered distribution.
Thus, between paying a levy on all recordable media and having the right to make as many copies from others as you want, DRM Restrictions which seek to limit this ability could be considered in violation of Canadian law. The law says I am entitled to make my copies, but now you won't let me.
Of course IANAL, and they could cover themselves by making it the DRM an EULA item - ie, "By purchasing this music you agree to be bound by our terms of service..." blah blah.
I, for one, won't use this. Screw that. Pay almost the same price for DRM locked, poorly formatted music that I have to pay twice for if I backup to CD? Bugger that. I'll just buy the CD that I can then do what I want with (within limits of course).
Blockwars: realtime, multiplayer, free!
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Kinda reminds me of the Ontario Electricity Market Operator www.theimo.com. During the post-blackout period, they posted the current Ontario demand hourly. It was useful to check their site to determine if rolling blackouts were required. One problem: they ship you a 100KB background bitmap which for some reason wasn't cached by MSIE. During peak use, the server failed to keep up with the load. I wonder what they could have done had they simply dropped the bitmap for that week...
Ok, I tried buying a song from my tiBook, mainly because I wanted to see if I could convert from WMA to MP3 and put it on my iPod. As a Canadian Apple user I'm a little pissed at ITMS for not being available here.
.aspx page. I expect the payment part uses some active-x control that will limit you to those OSs or x86/Linux running IE in Wine. I assume they do OS detection from the browser ID.
When I tried to create an account and proceed to enter my credit card info, I got the following message:
Sorry, Puretracks only supports the following OS's: Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / 2003 / XP and IE 5+
It was on an
Bummer.
What's up with people making new web services in this fashion? I mean, how much harder is it to select technology that will work on all platforms and do your development from there?
I really wanted to take advantage of the Canadian Exchange Rate. I was going to buy mp3s at .99 cents Canadian and then import them into America to sell them at .90 cents American.
I wouldn't have to pay any import tax or transportation fees.
As a Canadian waiting for a decent music service i'm sorry to see all the limitations outlined in the review..
It's interesting that while all the RIAA riff-raff has been going on, emblazoned throughout the media - no one has even questioned the fact that Microsoft has managed to somehow collude with all the recording companies to ensure that all the songs on any of these online services are in WMA/DRM wrapped audio format. Pretty unfortunate for all of us Linux and non-Microsoft OS users. These music services will be a success, and quietly behind the scenes I believe the happiest company involved will be Microsoft - now knowing they have yet one more thing to keep you locked to their platform. This note of course doesn't even touch on all the problems with the limitations imposed by the DRM being used for the songs off Puretracks. But anyway, enough said for now...
Jeff
only $0.14 US per track!
Wow! That's a great price! Isn't that something like $.02 US?
"Apple's online music store is the only one who got it "right" with respect to maintaining consumer rights."
No, they did not get it right, since the solution requires you to burn onto "outside" media and then convert from that, instead of just saving the desired file format in the first place.
Some miscellaneous thoughts: - WMA as an audio format, DRM aside, is not an inherently bad idea; no worse than AAC. Is this a problem with the service, or a shortcoming of the iPod as its main competitors all support WMA? WMA offers the widest range of device support with the best DRM; their choice was pretty simple IMHO and they can't be blamed for it. - They CAN be blamed for stopping at 192kbps. They'd get my money if they offered losslessly compressed WMA-Pro versions. My entire library is ripped as such and it's great. As it stands, I won't use them if they don't because I can't stand any lossy compression, period. - As for the whole issue of limited copying, why not simply: 1) download tracks; 2) make iso image of tracks using burning software of choice; 3)re-rip tracks from image using DaemonTools, or the virtual disc tool that comes with Nero. Boom, no more protection and no wasted CDR's, though unless you re-rip losslessly you'll be subject to transcoding artefacts I guess. Did I mention I hate lossy compression? - Personally, I pay homage to the bands I love by giving them my money. No matter how much the band finally gets, at least I know they're getting something. I'm not sure how the Canadian media levy works in this regard so I don't justify copying entirely on the basis of the levy. Is anyone aware of exactly how the money from the levy is distributed? Is Britney getting it all?
The money being collected through this levy here in Canada is NOT being distributed according to this article
here dated January 2003. Not sure if this has changed since then, but I doubt it.
"At the meeting, tech industry groups are likely to point out that the CPCC has not yet distributed a cent of the millions it has collected in fees over the years to musicians.
Since 1999, the CPCC has collected more than CN$28 million in copyright compensation fees. It expects to collect more than CN$100 million in levies next year. "
So somebody somewhere is racking up a lot of interest payments on the musicians money, I wonder if they'll see that too?.
"The CPCC is poised to begin making payments in 2003," a statement from the organization reads.
I bet it will be delivered by the flying pig too.
Are there any of these services that are MP3? I'd really like to use one of these services but I tried pressplay and I *couldn't* listen to my downloaded music after I finished my subscription! That and having restrictions on moving my music around is a pain in the ass.
1) Its Canadian
2) It sucks
In that order
(quick vote...how many of you think of Canada as "the 51st state"?)
"Then re-rip it to mp3. Wow! That was hard!"
The AAC sound is already dodgy, and then you rerip to another lossy foramt.
You must have ears of tin.
"Due to overwhelming publicity, our store is currently at full capacity."
I think that should read "Due to slashdotting..."
It worked for me. Maybe they're just throwing up the old "Due to an overwhelming Slashdotting..." message when slashdot.org is the HTTP-Referrer.
3000+ comments meta-modded. 0 mod points awarded.
Lesson for other meta-suckers: Don't believe the hype!
More subtly, you could arrange things so that Windows users get the same files, but their bandwidth is restricted.
Of course, if you really want to have some fun, you can always recompile Apache so it identifies as Microsoft IIS, and set your httpd-conf so pages with an
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The levies are set by this board of people and ar enot per MB. And if you would just compare Canadian HD prices to US ones you would see that they are not only comparable when you take into account the exchange, but because of the US dollar you can often geta better deal buying from a Canadian suppler.
So stop spouting bullshit when you have no clue what you are talking about.
I saw a piece on this last night on a local station and the question came up of artist compensation. Whoever they were talking to said that on a $1.00 music purchase, the artist would be receiving $0.20.
For what it's worth, I'll mention that it looked like a knock-off of the iTunes Music Store. The layout was completely the same. They even had the same listing style on the front page for showing the most popular albums.
FWIW, I'm just going to wait until the iTMS is available in Canada is this puretunes thing is, IMO, certainly not the solution.
if i'm not mistaken, isn't p2p already legal in canada, thus making this service a waste of money? or am i reading this incorrectly?
It seems like 99 cents per song, which has become the de facto standard price for online music sales, is much too expensive. That comes out to almost $14/full CD - approximately the same as buying a CD at retail. BUT ... there's no manufacturing/printing cost, no inventory cost, low distribution cost, etc.
A much more reasonable (and acceptable, to me) price would be in the 50 cent range per track. At 99 cents, I'm staying away. At 50 cents, I'm not just testing the water, I'm diving right in.
Mudge
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they're not.
You can also (with 3rd party tools) convert it to AIFF. It's really easy. Why do people keep bringing up this burn to cd thing? It's like saying that you can copy a file by a combination of printing and ocr. Why not take the easy route? Hell, anyone can use audio hijack if they don't want to use one of the cli m4p -> AIFF converters.
t'nera semordnilap
When I can go to my local pawn shop and get cd's for $2-6 CDN
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
search for track by artist/genre/title/etc.
select format mp3/ogg/etc
select bitrate
high speed download
just like a thousand pirates have done before and eventually got shut down. they shoulda charged per download.
bite my glorious golden ass.
Thank you for visiting Puretracks.com.
Due to overwhelming publicity, our store is currently at full capacity.
Please return shortly.
Thanks again for visiting.
Puretracks.com
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
I wonder how much Jobs had to pay to get this article on slashdot. .99c for a Celene Dion song should be stopped at any or all costs.
More seriously though, they are doing everything half-assed, most of the songs are probably from crappy Canadian bands that no one actually cares about.
When will these Canadian record companies and the CRTC realize not many people give a shit about Canadian music-- I feel it had to be an act of god for their site to be down... anyone that is willing to pay
It still seems that the RIAA is deftly afraid of electronic media. I really don't think these kinds of things will work as long as they arn't really going all out. I guarentee the reason they are using WMA cause of the DMR embedded into it.
_____
Got Wang?
Where else can you be beaten by a 300 lb wang.
Magnatune.com got it right - they offer all thier music in various formats, including both FLAC and Ogg!
You can download the tracks you buy as MP3 (fixed or variable rate), WAV, OGG, or FLAC. No DRM. No country restrictions.
314-15-9265
Umm... Wanna try that again?
$1.00 US ~ $1.32 CA
$1.00 CA ~ $0.75 US
If you think you can hurt me again, you're wrong. I left my heart in my other pants.
.. am going to hold out for puretracks.de to come online. I'll finally be able to get all my David Hasselhoff without risk of being sued by the RIAA.
Live web cams
mp3 is just as bad as wma. If they aren't serving uncompressed PCM wav files, its not any fun.
This proposal is the EXACT SAME as the previous proposal from about 5 years ago. The actual levies are set by a copyright board that is NOT under control by the Heritige Minister, who is the one proposing these extravagant amounts. The board has a history of assigning much lower levies. Example, 5 years ago the proposal was for 1 dollar a CD, the board enacted it to be 2 cents or something, which the CD companies effectively absorbed.
The board has sole discretionary power to decide what the levies are, even assuming the law is passed. And no one knows what they will set until then, but you can bet that the Industry Minister and others (eg, IBM, et al) will be lobbying heavily to have it set very low, or even zero, as they had previous set.
In short, theres no way in hell that you are going to see any 100 dollar levies on hard drives. If you lived in Canada you'd realize that.
Remember, that's $21CDN per gigabyte, so it's like $0.80US for a 100GB HDD.
Didn't anyone realize that $10 CDN is worth approx ~7 USD. It's the infamous 30% American discount due to currency rates.
If you're willing to accept WMV files, the rights to the files will be 33% off. Once you have the rights to the song, perhaps you can download someone else's encoding and just store those files somewhere.
-- dK
From the PureTracks site: ... Based in Canada, and open all hours, the Puretracks* music store is operated by Moontaxi Media Inc., one of North America's leading online music providers. For more details about our affiliate and partner program please contact us at Partners@Puretracks.com. ..."
...".
... We provide everything to make a successful Internet Radio Station. We provide the licensed music, cleared for use on the Internet. We provide the programming expertise, making sure each affiliate is provided with music that fits its brand. ..."
/.'ers could get through all that drivel.
... the robber barons your hippie parents warned you about."
"
Moontaxi media is an internet broadcaster, the provider of canned music on Air Canada flights and your dentist's office, responsible for hundreds of internet streaming music channels, and a whole bunch of other things.
Sample:
"... Distributing music to business establishments, such as resturants, hotels, condominiums, and hospitals
Or another, referring to the Streaming Radio business:
"
[]
We provide all the technology needed, including streaming media servers and web and radio player development ensuring a hassle free experience for our affiliates.
[]
And best of all, we provide the advertisers, allowing our affiliates to profit from their internet radio. What's more, above and beyond the profit potential, our affiliates get a branded Internet Radio service all their own, which helps keep customers coming back, and staying around longer.
Sounds like a real hip crowd. Surely success can only follow. The [] indicate where I broke up their long-winded monoparagraphic style, so
By the way, a lot of their business is in the US. A lot.
Owned by EMI and Universal Music, it's fairly obvious that Apple's discussions with the CIRA were just a smokescreen to get the industry owned site up first.
* I think this is supposed to point to some notice about trademarks, the quote is verbaitm. But since the asterisk didn't point to anything at the site, I'm going to make one up for them:
"PureTracks
1) There are no common law rights to copyright in Canada. See s.89 of the Copyright Act. You should (in theory) be able to determine any right under copyright by reading the Copyright Act. It doesn't exactly work this way, but it's true in general.
2) There is no "fair use" doctrine in Canada, at least not like it is in the States. In the states "fair use" is a broad, non-exhaustive principle. In Canada it's called "fair dealing" and it involves a number of specifically set out exclusions that make up fair-dealing.
3) People have to be careful interpreting Canadian copyright law based on US (or even UK) copyright law. They really are surprisingly different, at least as far as my research has gone.
4) DRM may well be illegal under something other than copyright (I'm thinking Competition Act, but I don't know). It would be an interesting research project for somebody to look into.
Well, this is the first time I have seen written on Slashdot that iTunes was not available to non US citizens. I had no idea. This is important news to anyone who is non USA! I am a New Zealander - and it just goes to show how USA biased Slashdot is. It also makes me realise that while the IT world might be in ruins in the USA, the rest of the IT world may in fact be a happy place to be. Yay!. Made me realise that I shouldn't place too much weight on what I read on Slashdot.