A legal music downloading service that works on Linux

[Laszlo Pandy]

Puretrack.ca announced back in February that is was going to start 
selling MP3 on their site as well as the usual DRM crippled WMA tracks 
that they had before. However on FAQ on their MP3 page[1], it says:

Q: 	Does this mean I can buy songs from Puretracks on a Mac?
A: 	Not yet. But we are definitely working on it.

Since they say it doesn't work on the Mac I was disappointed and assumed 
it wouldn't work on Linux, but today I decided I would give it a try 
anyway and if it didn't work after I paid my money I would use my 
friend's computer to download it.

Once I went through checkout and paid with my credit card, it takes you 
to a page with an ActiveX control to allow you to download your songs. 
Obviously that didn't work on Firefox, but I clicked on the link for the 
"alternate download" method and it took me to another page which let me 
download their downloadmanager.exe program. Then I simply ran the 
program with wine on the command line and everything started downloading:

sudo apt-get install wine
wine downloadmanager.exe

Usually for me wine only works partially and crashes a lot, but this 
program worked flawlessly. I tried to crash it but I could not.

All this means that for those willing, there is now a legal music 
downloading service that work on Linux. As far as I am aware (correct me 
if I'm wrong) this is a first in Canada (and probably further than that) 
for Linux. I just wanted to let everyone know, and I hope this info helps.

Of course their selection of MP3's isn't that great because most labels 
still insist on DRM, however some of my favorite Canadian bands are 
already on that page such as Barenaked Ladies, Stars, The Arcade Fire, 
and Broken Social Scene. Hopefully EMI's music will be available without 
DRM soon too.

Laszlo

[1] http://www.puretracks.com/content/viewer.aspx?cid=GlobalNav_MP3