Last week, I got a song stuck in my head. Stuck in such a way that the only way I was going to get it out was to plop a copy of it onto Winamp and play it a few times in a row. Only problem is that I don't have that song.

It being two in the morning, going down to HMV was out of the question, so I decided that I'd try and download a legal copy off of the internet from Canada's premier online music store, Puretracks.

Now when I go to their site the first thing I'm confronted with is a message thanking me for visiting but informing me that while they value their Mac audience, the Windows Media player for Mac is not currently compatible with Microsoft protected audio content. Therefore I may not enter the site.

Oh. Okay. Fine. But I'm not on a Mac.

I'm running WinXP Professional and surfing the net with FireFox. Leaving aside their alienation of the Mac users, do these people also want to alienate the 10-20% of net users who are not using Internet Explorer? Apparently. What seems even stranger is that the site works fine in FireFox, provided you don't link in from the front page. The front page and checkout of the site are designed to throw any browser that isn't Internet Explorer on Windows to the Mac apology page. Just plain sloppy coding, imho.

Whatever - I've got to get this song out of my head. I pop into Internet Explorer and revisit the site. And here all my troubles began.

See, I knew a bit of the tune and a snatchet of the chorus, but had no idea what the song's actual name is or who the artist may be. Taking a bet that the song is titled the same as the words from the chorus, I type into the search field, 'it don't mean a thing'. Before I can say, 'crappy search engine' I'm deluged with hundreds of songs, 20 per page, 25 pages worth. Page one is entirely songs titled 'Don't'. Page two leads into songs titled 'Don't Cry' or 'Don't Stop', etc. etc.

It seems that instead of looking for just the phrase I wrote, it found each song that contains at least one of those words in the title. I try putting quotes around my search - same problem. I try plus signs in between the words - no luck. Whoever it is at Puretracks that decided to use 'OR' instead of 'AND' for searches should be fired on the spot for gross incompetance. That one decision probably cost this company several thousand sales. I can tell you, I'd of abandoned the site long before if I weren't suffering insomnia with an old swing tune stuck in my head.

Now, unless I can figure out who the artist of the song is, I'm going to have to sift through 25 pages, so I pop open Google in another browser and type in 'it don't mean a thing'. Bingo - first entry gives me the name I need, Duke Ellington. So it's back to Puretracks to do a search on 'Duke Ellington' and I see there's another employee or two who need to be shown the door.

Duke Ellington is in the database not once, but ten seperate times. He's entered in as 'Duke Ellington & His Orchastra' and again as 'The Duke Ellington Orchastra'. There's an entry for 'Ellington, Duke' and another for 'Duke Ellington' and a third for 'Edward "Duke" Ellington (1899 - 1974)'. Is there no one at this organization that knows how to upkeep a database? Are none of the data entry clerks taught to avoid duplicating entries? Each one of these entries has a handful of albums associated with it, so I have to click on each name and then each album to see a track list.

At long last, I think I've located the song - or at least I think it's the song. I need to click on the preview to verify that this is what I actually want. The preview launches Windows Media Player into a seperate window and I hear a couple seconds of nothing, then there's a drum, a little bit of piano, and then.... nothing. My ten second preview has ended. I have no clue, whatsoever, if this is what I'm actually after.

At this point I'm getting to be in a foul mood, so I say 'krunk it' and drop the thing into my cart. Time to checkout. Oh - but I can't just pay and go. No. I've got to register. Fine. Whatever. Give me the registration page. Suddenly I'm realizing why the site looks familiar.
Back in the summer, McDonalds was giving out free music downloads with the purchase of a Big Mac. Back then I'd gotten a page into the registration to collect my free song when I was suddenly hit with questions asking me my profession, interests and annual income - a little more personal info than a free song is worth, imho. I'd surfed away and tossed the free song coupons.Well, here I am again. Fortunately it looks like they've downgraded their nosiness, asking only for my full mailing address and asking me to volunteer my age and gender. Can anyone give me a good reason that a company delivering a download needs my home address? I finish the registration process and again get ready to checkout. My song comes to a total of $2.12 after taxes. A 50 year old recording and they want two bucks for a digital copy. In my mind, that's a bit steep, even if I was sure it was the right song. What's more, there's something that's been nagging at me all along. I don't use Windows Media Player to listen to music, I use WinAmp. Will I be able to listen to this song?

I look around the site for an FAQ. No such luck - but there is something entitled 'Accessing your Music' on the front page. Clicking on it loads up a Flash file with a short animation showing how to download. There's no fastforward - no pause - no rewind. I just have to sit, pay attention and hope they address my question. They don't.

I finally find the FAQ burried in the 'help' section but it offers no answers and raises even more questions. Their help document in one place states flat out that registration is not required to buy - in another instance states that you have to register to checkout. Jinkies - enough of this.

I tried some other Canadian music sites, Futureshop's and Sympatico's. Maybe they would offer a better site - one that was actually usable. No such luck. It would seem that both sites are simply co-brandings with Puretracks. A different style sheet and a logo and budda bing, budda boom, a useless Puretracks site becomes a useless Futureshop music download site. The Sympatico site, at first wouldn't let me in, claiming I wasn't in Canada. After I shut my firewall down, it let me in, but it wouldn't recognize Sympatico as being my ISP - so no access to any of the offers I should be able to buy from.

My final verdict: Puretracks sucks cold, runny eggs.