TORONTO - Canada's homegrown digital music store lifted controversial copy restrictions from a chunk of its catalogue Wednesday, adding its weight to a growing number of industry players that appear increasingly open to unfettered file-sharing.
Starting immediately, Canadian-owned Puretracks Inc. will offer 50,000 unrestricted digital files in an MP3 format that can be burned, e-mailed or copied to computers, portable music players and cellphones, said company president Alistair Mitchell.
All the tracks come from smaller labels but they include indie giants known for favouring loose controls over music - Nettwerk, whose roster includes heavyweights Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan and Barenaked Ladies; and Arts & Crafts, stocked with buzz bands like Broken Social Scene, Feist and Phoenix.
Many of these same labels already offer MP3s on their own websites and through EMusic.com, a subscription-based service whose entire catalogue is free of copy restrictions.
Mitchell said more songs will be added to Puretracks as deals are struck with additional labels, but acknowledged that the majors - Universal, Sony-BMG, EMI and Warner - remain committed to digital locks that control the way files are used.
Still, industry watchers said the move is indicative of an increasing willingness by retailers and labels to consider new approaches to how music is distributed.
"The industry is starting to wake up to the realization that you can't treat your fans like criminals from the get-go," said Andrew Cash, head of the lobby group the Canadian Music Creators Coalition, which is opposed to digital locks.
"When you do that you're just not going to keep them. This is sort of a wide-open field - we need to get into some serious discussions about how to monetize the free peer-to-peer networks that are out there so that people do get paid."
That could include additional fees for Internet or phone service, said Cash, a Toronto singer-songwriter who has posted one of his latest tracks on his website.
The record industry has long argued that digital locks - known as "digital rights management," or DRM - are necessary to limit copies and fairly compensate artists and other copyright holders.
However, most indie bands and small labels willingly sell unfettered tracks or even give them away for free, regarding MP3s as a tool to generate publicity for future record, tour or merchandise sales.
Recent rumblings suggest larger players are toying with open file sharing, too.
Earlier this month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs surprised many by calling for an end to digital locks on music. Tracks sold through his popular iTunes music store are embedded with software that prevents them from playing on anything but iPods.
Yahoo Music general manager Dave Goldberg said he expected most of Yahoo's catalogue to be DRM-free by the end of the year, and there are rumours that Amazon, LimeWire and MySpace are also working on DRM-free, iPod-compatible MP3s to compete with iTunes.
Although the big labels maintain their commitment to digital locks, they too, have flirted with unrestricted files.
EMI - home to Coldplay and Janet Jackson - has recently been selling unrestricted MP3s by Norah Jones, Lily Allen and Relient K, spokesman Adam Grossman said from New York.
"The results, they've been very positive," Grossman said. "We've gotten very enthusiastic feedback from fans. We continue to experiment with a range of different business models, including MP3."
Puretracks lags far behind EMusic and industry leader iTunes in terms of sales, and offering unrestricted tracks would put them in a better position to compete in a rapidly changing market, agreed industry watcher and Ottawa law professor Jeremy de Beer.
"Their market share's not big, mostly because their songs aren't compatible with iPods," noted de Beer, who specializes in digital rights.
Market forces aside, de Beer said consumer backlash against DRM was likely a larger driver behind Puretrack's move.
"We're seeing the death of DRM," he said.
Nettwork president Ric Arboit said his Vancouver-based company spent about a year trying to get Puretracks to offer DRM-free tracks, noting that earlier contracts essentially extended terms agreed upon with the major labels to the smaller labels, too. About half of Nettwerk's music sales occur online, he added.
Mitchell said Puretracks, launched in 2003, still believes DRM has its place, but that music labels should be able to choose whether they want digital locks, even if omitting them would theoretically allow users to violate copyright.
"Respect for the copyright owners and the like in terms of sharing that file with others is another matter. We're not here to say that's to be condoned and supported," he said.
"The basic proviso we have is: Trust our customer."
