Aussie telco Telstra releases its own Music Store - but no iPod for you!


Following an annus horribilis for its email outages in 2003, Telstra's BigPond tells iPod users - "Screw You!" We're a Windows Media Player oufit, so go jump! But you can learn about the new Bigpond Music store on an Apple iBook!"

Telstra is Australia's major telco, supplying landline, mobile, cable, ADSL and dial-up internet access, as well as having a half-share in the most popular cable TV company, Foxtel.

I was an early adopter of Telstra's BigPond cable internet service when it was the only show in town (we are talking of 100MB per month limits before charging for excess MB downloads.)

Poor management and overpriced services saw me jump ship to its only cable competitor, Optus, when I had the opportunity. Here in Australia, with the introduction of ADSL to compete with cable, there is a price war for broadband access underway.

Telstra has just released its Music store, one of the first for Australia. Apple says its iTunes music store is coming here sometime in the first half of the year.

So this morning I accessed the Bigpond music site, on a borrowed G3 iBook 14", with OS X Panther and Safari as my browser. Accessing the Bigpond Music store URL here (notice it is not a .au domain for worldwide access), I noticed the following dialogue box drop down from my browser, after the site attempted to see what version of Flash was installed.
Not a very good start, but there are always means to get around these problems. But then straightaway, another dialogue box drops down, here:
That's funny, the link on the same page as the Bigpond music store shows a link to Microsoft's Windows Media Player, and there in their glory (ahem!), are the Mac OS versions (OS9 and X) to download! In fact I have the latest version for OS X (WMP9) installed here on the iBook! Looks like not all Windows Media Players are created equal, after all!

This is not a good start of course, but given it is BigPond (other parts of Telstra are known to offer better customer satisfaction, and my landline is a Telstra, not Optus, line), I'm neither surprised nor disappointed.

But the news is that by ONLY using Windows Media Player, all flavours of the #1 MP3 player, the iPod, are not supported. In principle, that angers me, but....

Well, that's a commercial decision on the part of BigPond, no doubt worked out with the support of Microsoft whom Telstra have been giving hard time to lately by entertaining the idea of moving some server solutions to Linux.

Still, I wanted to see what else there was to the Bigpond store, so found the way to access the homepage. Once there, it seems if you subscribe to Bigpond, you pay AUD1.49 per song, while non-subscribers pay about 40c more.

That's double what US iTunes users pay, and given the Aussie dollar is worth about USD0.77, that's a steep conversion. It's not as if there is a special delivery fee or transport costs involved!

So, I looked around the Bigpond site a little more, and came across its Flash tutorial, showing how to use the store.
Here is the first picture you see when you access the tutorial:


Hmm, (as I put on my best Jerry Seinfeld querying voice), if I'm not mistaken, and perhaps I may be, isn't that an incompatible Apple iBook our curious friend is holding?

And to add a little more devilry to the picture, the ad agency has reversed the picture so the CD tray and power connector is on the left, and the Apple lid logo has been left off.

Here is the real McCoy for comparison:
The CD tray is on the right, and there is the Apple logoon the lid.

Still, even a lowly Mac user can access the tutorial which is quite a nifty Flash demonstration.

As you progress through the tute which shows you how to listen to samples and set up accounts, it uses some local and US artists as examples. Now (back in Seinfeld mode), I may be mistaken again, but perhaps Telstra knows something the rest of us don't know about Santa Barbara criminal justice, but if I'm not mistaken one of the albums used in the tute is Michael Jackson's, "Invincible". Really....?

Well, even if the music store doesn't work out for Bigpond, at least they hired an advertising agency which matches Apple's sense of humour in advertising (Warning: Mac injoke). Oh, by the way, Windows NT users face the same restrictions as Mac users - so no downloading at work for you either!

Update (January 29): The Age technology editor, Garry Barker, did a piece in its TV guide describing Telstra's music store, and its decision to go with the Microsoft proprietary standard:

"Justin Milne, now head of BigPond and architect of the dominant Australian ISP's recent move into downloadable music, says that Microsoft's software monopoly, and its all but limitless money, will win it control of the online music business, not just in Australia but worldwide."

So the message is - why wait, be absorbed now, resistance is futile. David never beats Goliath, does he? For caving into, and thus supporting monopolist behaviour, Justin Milne deserves a fiscal fraask in pisk. I hope his venture gets creamed but good!



Posted: Fri - January 16, 2004 at 01:18 PM         |

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