Ethical, legal, and sensible music downloading in Canada

Amazon issued a press release announcing that they'll be expanding their DRM-free MP3 music store internationally in 2008. No exact dates are specified though.

It's good to hear that there may soon be a place to buy music that is ethical, legal, and sensible.

Here's where I think that other options fail:

not sensible

Apple's iTunes has been gradually getting ridding of DRM, which improves its sensibility. (After all, what kind of sense does it make for "pirates" to offering an unambiguously better quality product than the labels themselves).

Even with reduced DRM, iTunes is difficult to use for those without iPods and completely unusable if running and operating system like Linux. It's also obnoxious. How many times do I need to delete the perpetually reoccurring iTunes and Quicktime icons from my desktop? Will it ever act like a standard Windows application?

questionable ethics

Russian stores like AllofMP3 offer downloads in MP3 format and may even be legal. However, they seem to fail on the ethical front. The artists are not currently being compensated.

It's not quite as bad as it sounds. They sell tracks at roughly the same rate as you'd pay if you could buy legal CD by the track in Russia. Russian copyright law also allows them to sell any music, but requires them to collect a royalty to pay the artists. Apparently they're collecting this money, although the rights-holding agencies in North America aren't unhappy with the royalties set by Russia.