Puretracks Music Store Drops DRM

khendron writes "The Canadian online music store Puretracks (a store I have generally avoided because of their Microsoft-specific solutions) has announced that it will immediately start selling part of its catalog as DRM-free MP3 files. The site's unprotected catalog, which includes artists such as The Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan, will initially feature only 50,000 of its 1.3 million tracks, but their number will grow weekly. The Globe and Mail says the move will likely profit Puretracks because its DRM-free-music will be playable on iPods. It quotes one industry watcher saying 'We're seeing the death of DRM.'" Essentially Puretracks is relaxing the major-label mandated DRM rules that it had initially applied to all labels, even the indies that wanted no part of DRM.

Comments

Re:Time to put your money where your mouth is

[geoffspear]

Weird that the Russians would manage to put together such an amazing business model and service

Why is that weird? They had almost 75 years of experience under a regime that believed in taking property from the "evil capitalists" who owned it and redistributing it to the masses. It's not that weird that they'd figure out how to apply that to "intellectual property" as well.