It’s a simple thing, or at least it should be. You want to buy music online. You want to visit a website, type in your favorite musician, buy their latest album with your credit card, and listen to it on your computer, your mp3 player, perhaps your cellphone, even your laptop during business trips. You want it to be as easy as it was when you bought CDs, audio cassettes, or vinyl albums. It isn’t. It’s confounding.

With the Federal government preparing to reform Canada’s copyright laws, Canada AM asked if I would put together a simple guide as to how you can purchase music and movies “legally” in Canada.

I’d rather stick my head in a wood chipper. At best I will confuse you, frustrate you, aggravate you, and drown you in technobabble. I’d rather wait until things get easier and then do a whole song-and-dance number on television about it, but that could be awhile.

So here is my best crack. Please forgive me, and don’t shoot the messenger.

An Overview Of The ProblemsOnly In Canada

As a Canadian you are restricted to buying your content from Canadian online stores. Online stores in the US such as Amazon.com are not allowed to serve you as there are separate licensing and copyright issues for selling the music in each country. Even if the content is free, they still can’t offer it to you until they get clearance. The system for clearing these rights is lengthy and involved and most US stores can’t be bothered with it. The confusion here is, since none of these issues prevented customers from crossing the border to buy CDs, cassettes, or vinyl albums, why would it suddenly be an issue online?

Imagine walking into a Wal-Mart in the States to buy the latest Coldplay album only to be told that they can’t serve you and that you’ll have to go back to Canada to buy it from Wal-Mart Canada instead?

Delays, delays, delays

Getting through the copyright and clearance issues in selling digital music and movies in Canada has proven to be such a time-consuming and complicated affair that very few companies are willing to go through it. The smaller companies that have succeeded are often limited in their music selection and even when the majors make the effort, such as Apple, Sony, or Microsoft, their Canadian operations are years behind their American ones in offering new content. Some, like Sony, simply give up and choose not to launch a store at all. Even the best online stores tend to take awhile to get the latest digital goods and, restricted from going outside of Canada to buy digital media, Canadian consumers are forced to wait.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) 

Every store has a set of restrictions that prevent you from using their music on certain devices, on the number of times you can make copies, and the different ways you can listen/view to it. It’s different from store to store and very few stores use a system that is compatible with another’s. This often involves having to download a license along with each song which in turn has to be activated for each device you want to play on it, which can be rife with technical issues. For this reason some stores will only accept users from a PC computer, not a Mac. Understanding which cellphones and portable devices will work on any given store’s DRM is often a confusing task. The idea behind Digital Rights Management was to prevent people who purchased music from pirating it, however it has since been suggested that it’s the people who don’t purchase music that do all the pirating and that DRM merely punishes the customers who choose to pay instead.

Subscription-based Services

In an attempt to compete against Apple, several smaller companies have taken the tack of reinventing the way music is sold by offering it on a subscription-based service. In some cases you can download music but only play them as long as you maintain a monthly fee, while others allow you to play the files after you’ve stopped paying, but limit the number of files you can download each month.

Since there were no subscription services with CDs, Audio Cassettes, and Vinyl Albums, introducing a whole new way to purchase music has merely added more confusion to an already confusing market. There is a small demographic of users who have figured the subscription services out and love them, but not enough to really justify it all.

The Canadian Digital Media StoresiTunes Canada (recommended)

Apple.com/ca/itunes/

With the largest selection of content in the country, Apple Canada offers music, audio books, podcasts, short films, TV shows, and now movies. Their store is well laid-out and offers a number of purchase options including credit cards, allowances for kids, gifting, and retail gift cards. Their Digital Rights Management is by far the least glitchy I’ve tried, although it can be a bit confusing for users to learn how to authorize different computers and different iPods for personal libraries.

Non-iPod users can now access a growing library of music in regular MP3 format. All songs that have a little “+” symbol next to them, can be purchased and used on any MP3 player and on any computer.

Puretracks (recommended)

Puretracks.ca

With the second largest selection of content in the country, Puretracks offers music, a francophone catalog, and a small selection of TV shows. Their store is well laid out, supports both Macs and PCs. Puretracks also appears as the store on MuchMusic.com, Sympatico/MSN and as the mobile-based music store for Telus. They use Microsoft’s Windows Media Player DRM to manage their content, a system that has given me grief on many occasion, and ironically doesn’t work with Microsoft’s new Zune players.iPod Users – Puretracks offers a number of songs in DRM-Free MP3 format. Any song with the blue “MP3” icon can be played on any mp3 player and on any computer.

Zunior

Zunior.com

With a strong focus on independent music, Zunior’s entire catalog is offered as DRM-Free MP3 files. They work on any computer and on any MP3 player. Zunior only offers entire albums for sale, no individual tracks, but that’s the only restriction. The store can be a bit confusing to browse through, artists are sorted by record label, but hidden amongst the sections are big name acts including Feist, Wintersleep, and The New Pornographers. Make sure to grab their Free Compilation Album.

Bell Video Store (recommended)

Bellvideostore.ca

The Bell Video Store is the first online store in Canada devoted to offering movies and TV shows for both purchase and rental. Although it only has the support of a few movie studios at this time, their selection is still a healthy one and the playback, both on a mobile screen and on larger monitors is sharp and clear. Unfortunately it does not support Mac users and uses Microsoft’s Windows Media Player DRM which ironically is not supported by Microsoft’s Zune players.

Rogers Mobile Music Store

Rogers.com

Restricted only to Fido and Rogers customers who own a music cellphone, and only those who use a PC, this online store allows you to download music both through your phone and through your PC and keep both devices synchronized. You purchase tracks individually, or subscribe to a monthly plan where you can download a selection of tracks and listen to them as long as you pay the monthly fee. Music is offered both in MP3 and WMA formats.

eMusic

eMusic

eMusic offers a large catalog of DRM-free MP3 songs, meaning that they can play on any MP3 player and on any computer. The twist is that eMusic is a subscription-based service. You pay a fee each month and in turn are permitted to download a fixed number of tracks. $12 will let you download 30 songs for example. $18 will let you download 50 songs. If you want more than that there is the option to purchase “booster packs” to increase your monthly allowance.

Zik.ca

Zik.ca

Zik (a.k.a. Archambault) offers a wide selection of music, books, and movies for PC users. As a Quebec-based retailer they offer a strong selection for both English as well as French consumers. They use Microsoft’s Windows Media Player DRM, which can be glitchy, and is not supported by Apple’s iPods or Microsoft’s own Zune players.