Update: Had a look at this tonight and at the moment it's whole album purchases only but single tracks are "coming soon". The full album price is insanely expensive as you can buy a CD for the same price so at the moment this service is useless. But it's a start

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Assumptions are silly things.

Actually bothered to go looking for a lossless music seller and found one in seconds.

Music Giants sells music from "all four major record companies" in Windows Media Lossless format, playable in WMP10. Songs are US$1.29 each. Files cannot be converted to other formats but can be burnt to CD.

Close enough... But, as usual, it's US (or US credit-card) only. "International Distribution Coming..."

Music Giants press release.

Hopefully it will do fairly well and preasure iTunes to start selling lossless tracks.

AllOfMP3 also sells lossless tracks (FLAC format, no DRM) but the morality of such sales is still up in the air (it is legal). Artists are payed a "radio play fee" per sale rather than an actual sale fee. I suspect the Russian radio play fee would be fairly small.

Update : I should have guessed. This is US only.

Napster offers free downloads again. Two million songs on offer.

The catch? Each download is limited to 5 listens before you have to buy it. And it's paid for by advertising so I don't know how obtrusive that will be.

I like it. I might give it a go.

It's really nothing more than allowing a full song listen instead of 30 seconds like every other digital music site, but it's a step in the right direction.

As I've said before, my only sticking point left for buying single songs on the net is the lossy compression used. If I could buy lossless versions of the songs that I can burn to CD, the $1 or $2 price tag is fair. For me, even excellent quality lossy MP3s are still so worthless in the long run as I can't think of any price I'd be happy to pay for them that could ever work commercially.

How often have I paid $2 to just hear a song from a jukebox? Not very often lately, but I'll pay $3.30 for a coffee without thinking.

Buying music online will never compare to owning the album, and I don't think it could ever really compare in price in any way I'd be happy with. I'm happy to pay $20 for a piece of plastic I can display and maybe sell later. A piece of plastic I've burnt myself with copyright material on it I didn't create myself will always be worthless.

But for single songs, something I've wanted to do more of lately, I've warmed to the iTunes model of selling single tracks. Combined with the new Napster style try-before-you-buy model and a lossless seller and I'm completely sold.