Puretracks vs. iTunes

As you are probably aware, the iTunes store is now available in Canada. This is great news for us as our only real alternative for $0.99 music was puretracks. If you're like me, tired of downloading music at various bit rates, dealing with corrupt files and you welcome alternative browsers like mozilla, then this will be exciting news for you as well. I was quite disappointed with puretracks for a number of reasons. For one, you can only view their site with Internet Explorer. How ghetto is that? Here's the message you get when viewing with firefox.

We value our Mac audience, however the Windows Media player for the Mac platform is not currently compatible with Microsoft protected audio content. Puretracks is currently working to make our service available to Mac users.

I suspect that puretracks wasn't prepared for the introduction of itunes store to the Canadian market. Now, I suspect, they will suffer the consequences. Licensing is another issue that I have with Puretracks/Microsoft. I think Apple got it right with the ability to 'authorize' and, more importantly, 'deauthorize' up to five computers to play your purchased music.