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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.
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
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
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.
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
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....
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).
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
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
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?
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
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.
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.
Forbes has an article about the puretracks.com launch, but also mentions that iTunes is expected to launch for Windows this week!
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
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.
Are you offended by stores that employ anti-shoplifting measures (tattle tape in books, nogo wafers on clothing, surveillance cameras, etc)? After all, by doing so, they are stating loud and clear that they think that their customers are going to walk away with merchandise if they aren't watched.
Anti-shoplifting devices do not bother me because they remove or disable them once I purchase the item. After I leave the store, I am free to do with the item as I wish. Walmart/Target/J.C. Penney, etc. does not tell me when I can wear my purchase, where I can store it at home (no closet for you!), and I can sell it when I want, to whomever I want.
I understand that they don't want the music shared on P2P networks, but this DRM goes way beyond that. The Labels want the music to be restricted because of the fallout from the stupid decisions that they made from Napster on, but I do not intend to play their game. They can protect the music all they want until I buy it, but once it goes home with me, the Retailer and/or Label has no business telling me how I can listen to my purchase. The same goes for CDs.
Beware of Sleestak