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Downloading Music in Canada
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Downloading Music in Canada
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Downloading Music in Canada
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Canadian Music Downloads
Canadian Music Information
US and International Music Downloads
Articles and News on the Online Music Scene
The Major Labels
Music Recommendation Services
Radio and Music Streaming
(Free) Support Software
Canadian Music Downloads
The following services provide legal downloads in Canada.
iTunes Music Store Canada (requires download of iTunes for Windows or Mac)
Nettmusic MP3s (160 Kbps, 192 Kbps) of Nettwork Music Group artists, including Sarah McLachlan. Prices are in US dollars.
HearsayMusic.ca sells MP3s of Canadian independent artists
Sheeba Store is Jane Siberry's site to sell her music as MP3s (128 Kbps, 192Kbps). Set your own price.
The three below are all Windows-only, using WMA files.
PureTracks.com
ArchambaultZik.ca
Napster Canada
Sympatico, Telus, FutureShop ("Bonfire") and Aliant use PureTracks for their music services. Telus is also providing something they're calling PureRadio.
www.mytelus.com/music/
sympaticomusicstore.p uretracks.com/en/ (or sympaticomusicstore.ca)
bonfire.puretracks.com (FutureShop.ca)
aliant.puretracks.com ("Aliant Music Store")
Canadian Music Sites
Jazzpromo is a site that promotes Canadian jazz. It has free MP3s (requires registration).
Revolution Music Canada Independent music. Free MP3s.
UmbrellaMusic Canadian Music Lives Here
music.sympatico.ca has lots of resources.
ca.music.yahoo.com from Rogers/Yahoo
Canadian Law
Personally I have thousands of tracks that are either from my own CDs, or legally purchased from sites like Emusic and iTunes Music Store.
US and International Music Downloads
Although not located in Canada, many of these services are available to Canadians.
Emusic
I used to recommend EMusic.com for MP3s. I have used it from Canada. It was great, but now it has some limitations.
EMusic changed their terms so you can no longer get unlimited downloads. EMusic is currently owned by Dimensional Associates, LLC.
On the plus side, it has a good library of music, and the MP3s are unencumbered (no digital rights management). They changed from encoding at 128 Kbps fixed to using higher quality Variable Bit Rate (VBR) encoding. You have to use their download manager software, but there are versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Others
Smithsonian Global Sound has folk and world music for U$0.99, you get both an MP3 (128 Kbps?) and a FLAC (uncompressed) file.
A recent (2005) entry onto the scene is MP3tunes.com
AllOfMP3 is cited now as a popular alternative to EMusic. It is based in Russia. It was under investigation, but apparently has been cleared.
Here are some more:
Amazon.com Free Music Downloads
eClassical offers unencumbered MP3s and some free downloads
Magnatune try before you buy MP3 music. Features the awesome slogan We are not evil.
Audio Lunchbox
Weblisten
dmusic
IUMA
Epitonic.com Hi Quality Free and Legal MP3 Music
GarageBand.com (nothing to do with the Apple software)
Archive.org: Live Music Archive
UBUWEB : Sound : MP3 Archive literary and sound art MP3s.
Open Music Registry
MP3 Unsigned The Best MP3's from New and Unsigned Artists
music.download.com free music downloads
www.realworld.co.uk/od2/ music by Peter Gabriel and others, click on "free downloads", WMA format
RollingStone.com downloads various artists, seems to be mostly WMA
MTV.com - Music - Downloads and MTV2 - Download This Have to register (for free) with MTV first.
Playlist magazine: Downloads
The following are US-only and may have additional limitations. This is just a selection; there are more services than I have listed.
Tower Records Powered by LiquidAudio (but still WMA format). Has some free WMA downloads.
Napster 2.0 Windows XP/2000 only.
MusicNow (owned by CircuitCity)
Sony Connect
In Europe, OD2 (On Demand Distribution) provides a secure distribution service for music over the Internet. The company was co-founded in 1999 by Peter Gabriel and Charles Grimsdale (IT executive).
Online Downloadable Music Store Reviews and Info
Kuro5hin: Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads
pro-music / music online has a nice list of available digital music services from a European perspective, as well as lots of other info.
Museekster Legal Music Services
Legal MP3 Downloads scroll down on this blog and you will see links to tons of artists
Mjuice - A Digital Music Magazine - internet music guide
MP3.com is now a metaservice with a list of other Digital Music Services
Reviews
2005-03-03 Free Your Music - Buy MP3s
2004-12-13 Music Download Services Compared
Drop a Quarter in the Internet reviews US services. Mar. 22, 2004
TechoLiO comparison table of [US] downloadable music sites
BBSpot Reviews: Digital Music Stores December 22, 2003
Download without guilt 30/09/2002
Articles and News
The online music scene changes every week. Here are some articles that may help you to figure it out.
CIRPA - the Canadian Independent Record Production Association has good news items.
2005
2005-03-07 Yahoo readies iTunes rival for launch
2005-03-01 Nettwerk Music Group Introduces Online Radio Stations and Download Shop
2004
2004-12-02: The iTunes Music Store Canada is active today.
2004-11-22: The iTunes Music Store is definitely coming to Canada. In Apple press release Apple Launches EU iTunes Music Store they state Apple ... will launch the iTunes Music Store in Canada in November.
Forget Radio, Tune In to Net June 28, 2004
Sympatico launches music service
Napster to launch in Canada Tuesday, May 4, 2004
BuyMusic.com to be integrated into Buy.com March 27, 2004
Sympatico, Puretracks harmonize on music downloads
Telus introduces Pureradio service
2004-05-09 At some point in the recent past, CNet launched music.download.com as a free music download service, and relaunched MP3.com as a metaservice with MP3 resources and ("coming soon") the ability to search across multiple music download services.
2001-2003
The music revolution will not be digitized June 1, 2001
musicnet, pressplay fall short February 2002
A Pressplay Test Drive March 05, 2002
Race to be Canada's first music service is on May 30, 2003
Roxio set to relaunch Napster by end of year July 29, 2003
2003-05-31 The latest news is in two parts: Apple's iTunes Music Store, which is currently only available in the United States, and Roxio, who purchased the Napster "brand" and then recently purchased PressPlay.
In terms of the iTMS some people think Apple Finds the Future for Online Music Sales and others think you're still paying The Man. Highway To $0.99 Hell - Apple's iTunes music store: A rockin' revolution, or same ol' corporate song and dance?
Real is offering something called RealOne Rhapsody on Windows only in the US only, which is just a branded frontend onto Listen Rhapsody. They lowered their price to burn to CD to US$0.79, but you still have to have a subscription.
The Major Labels
The 5 major labels have consolidated into two groups (and then cross-licensed everything):
MusicNet - AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, EMI
pressplay - Sony, Vivendi Universal (Pressplay is now owned by Roxio, who turned it into Napster 2.)
Canadian Major Label Sites
WarnerMusic.ca
BMGcanada.com Bertelsmann Music Group, associated with Click2Music.ca
EMImusic.ca
SonyMusic.ca
umusic.ca Universal Music Canada.
Has UMusic Radio (Windows Media format). Powered by the usual suspects: theiceberg.com and moontaxi.ca
Note that these companies are perpetually buying, merging and de-merging with one another.
Searching for Music
There are lots of ways to do this.
music.lycos.com/downloads/ offers an MP3 search feature.
Erno Mijland has made a nice page with lots of music search options at www.lookingformusic.org
Music Recommendation Services
last.fm - lets you create and listen to radio stations (was AudioScrobbler) - optional plugins that track what you listen to (Mac/Windows/Linux)
Pandora - Flash based, makes "radio" channel based on your selected artist
Goombah - music recommendations based on your iTunes (Mac/Windows)
Mobster - music recommendations based on your iTunes (Mac/Windows)
UpTo11.net - music search and recommendations
inDiscover.net - a service designed to help bring independent music to new listeners
MusicMatch Instant Recommendations
SoundFlavor
MusicStrands
liveplasma - music and movie recommendations
MP3.com Musicvine (powered by liveplasma)
Webjay - playlist community
Plurn - playlist community
GenieLab
Foafing the music
Predixis Recommends based on playlists. Mac, Windows and Linux.
Mixtaper (offline January 2006)
Guardian Buy with a little help from your friends January 5, 2006 If you want to expand your CD collection, or just your musical taste, new websites aim to recommend songs you are bound to love
Radio and Music Streaming
If you have a broadband connection, rather than going to the work of picking and choosing files and downloading them, you might enjoy just listening to streaming radio stations on the net. Note that you will probably require some support software (listed at the bottom of the page) in order to access all the content on these sites.
CBC Radio One and Two, CBC Radio 3
Radio-Canada (en français)
Radio Canada International (in seven languages)
BBC Radio
Radio France
Nettradio from Nettwerk Music Group. Uses RealAudio.
theiceberg Canadian Internet radio. Requires free registration. Uses Windows Media.
FatPipeRadio.com is another offering from the Iceberg people. Requires free registration, Windows Media, Flash.
MoonTaxi.ca "Tour the universe of music". Associated somehow with HMV and maybe UMusic.ca? Requires Macromedia Flash and Windows Media.
Radio @ Netscape has a good selection of channels, but AOL has made it a bit annoying and Windows-only.
Live365 is a central site for locating and listening to tens of thousands of channels of audio. They also provide easy tools for setting up your own net radio station. Unfortunately there are now fees for running a station.
iRATE Radio a collaborative filtering system for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X that downloads and plays music. As you rate music it automatically finds more free music that you'll like by finding people who like similar music.
Radio Free Virgin (Windows only) has a few free channels, but no free virgins. You have to subscribe in order to get royally streamed.
Yahoo LaunchCast Radio
Listen Rhapsody (Windows only) has a limited number of free stations. Most of their stations are only available if you subscribe to their Plus service.
Live Radio on the Internet has a good list of stations, including ones from Canada.
Canadian Radio Stations is another such listing. Be warned that many of the links on both sites are dead.
(Free) Support Software
Some of these also have built-in net radio features.
QuickTime Mac and Windows. It will sometimes bug you to upgrade to the Pro version.
Windows Media Player Windows and Mac
Real.com: Real 10 for Windows and MacOS X, RealPlayer 8 Basic for MacOS 9. NOTE: They sometimes don't make it easy for you to find the free versions to download, but they are there. Try this link.
iTunes is free software for Mac and Windows that includes a "Radio Tuner" for access to net radio stations, as well as a music store.
musicmatch.ca (Bell) Jukebox for Windows only.
musicmatch.com Jukebox for Windows. In addition to the free radio channels, you can subscribe to "Radio MX" which offers additional stations and features. It is "annoyware" - it will keep bugging you to upgrade to the pay version. MusicMatch for the Mac has been completely discontinued which is a shame because it was a good player.
Incidentally, Yahoo owns MusicMatch.
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