CRIA, CMRAA 'license' Puretracks

The Big Five record labels have finessed their entry into the online music market in Canada with the announcement that the CMRRA (Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency) and CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) will license Puretracks, due go up on 14 October.

Puretracks is, "essentially a Windows version of iTunes," says The Mac Observer here, going on:

"Initially, Puretracks will list roughly 250,000 songs, including artists on all five of the major labels: BMG, EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner. But it's also stocking songs from a half-dozen independent Canadian labels, such as True North Records (whose artists include Bruce Cockburn and Randy Bachman) and Nettwerk (mostly younger acts like Avril Lavigne).

"Unlike iTunes, Puretracks sells Windows Media Audio files — a much smaller, data-filtered version of the original CD audio — that average about 4 MB and take roughly 20 seconds to download."

In an announcement, the CRIA and CMRRA say they'll issue similar licenses to Napster and MusicNet, "shortly thereafter" with "others expected to follow".

"Each of the services will offer upwards of 250,000 CD-quality songs on both a streaming and a la carte basis with prices starting at 99 cents [Canadian]," they say.

"We've all suffered the plague of unauthorized file 'sharing'," says CMRRA president David Basskin. "The best response is a legal, attractive alternative that will give the customers all of what they want - the world's best music - and none of what they don't want - spyware, porn and viruses."

With a 'cheap' Canadian dollar, the service competes more than favourably with the labels' similar US and European efforts.