Along with HDTracks, Bandcamp is the leading online store when it comes to buy music in a lossless format. They specialize in "indie" music, but the catalog has a wide range of artists.
Since it's the St-Jean Batiste in Québec, I bought the album "Les chemins de verre" by the band Karkwa. It's not a brand new release, it's been available for over a year, but I've heard the song "Marie tu pleures" on the public radio and it has been on my purchase list for a long time. Lovely track, it reminds me of the mood of the Elephant 6 crew and I just bought my tickets to see Jeff Magnum [of Neutral Milk Hotel] at the Pop Montreal festival, so I was in the perfect state of mind it hear this.
Not many french artists are available outside iTunes. Most of the local labels don't offer a lossless purchase. Even a MP3 download is rare. It's nice to see that a big label, Audiogram, distribute their music on Bandcamp.
The album cost 12$, it's the same price no mather the format you choose. On iTunes it's 8$, so that fixed price make the MP3 pricy, but the FLAC format is cheaper than the CD version.
Once the payment is completed [I use PayPal], you are redirected to the download link.
It you use iTunes, you can follow my step-by-step guide to convert the FLAC into Apple Lossless format.
A note on how to find music you like on Bancamp
Since a lot of unsigned and little known bands are using Bandcamp, a nice place to discover them is the the blog Crawdaddy. They feature a Bandcamp band of the week.
