It all began on Friday night when I decided to take advantage
of the Australian dollar to download digital versions of albums that are impossible
to get here in any physical form. It was
then that I discovered that you cannot purchase digital music from overseas
iTunes or Amazon sites. It seems that the
reason is to protect local providers.
If this is truly the case, it is one of the more idiotic rationalisations
I’ve ever heard. iTunes prices in
Australia appear to be about 50% higher than overseas. This is for DIGITIAL music. Just where are the overheads to justify the
mark up? It can’t be due to transport
costs, warehousing costs or a rise in shop leases and I’m pretty sure iTunes
isn’t one of the companies that attract the carbon levy. As for Amazon, what is there to protect? Amazon.aus is yet to be launched here and so denying
Australians access to its downloads appears indefensible. As if to compensate
for this, Amazon.UK did provide free delivery of books, CDs and DVDs to Australia
for almost a full year but has since stopped this practice. (I suspect that if Amazon
has a motive in denying downloading from overseas to Australia it is because
they are planning to sell their downloads at the higher iTunes rate when
Amazon.aus is eventually launched.) No
wonder the Government has launched an investigation into the sale of digital
media in this country. Even then I’d
doubt that anything could be achieved.
After all, a free trade agreement is in force between Australia and the
U.S and that doesn’t seem to have led to an appreciable difference here.
I’ve read somewhere recently that overseas companies deliberately
charge Australians a premium charge in the supply of a great many goods with
the justification being a belief that Australians are prepared to pay higher
prices. I do not know whether that is
the reason with iTunes but I suspect the reason other industries get away with
it is probably due to the way bricks and mortar retailers have not embraced the
internet as a means to sell goods. Last
year’s push by some retailers to add a 10% tax to goods bought over the net was
laughed at by the majority of Australian consumers and with good reason. As so many letter writers pointed out, even
with the 10% tax added, the goods would still be cheaper than those purchased
in a store. Some of the stores involved in this campaign did relent and
established internet sites but their sense of innovation over the net has been
to do nothing more than provide a means for consumers to buy their stock for
the same price as in their stores.
And this I suspect is the problem. Overseas businesses know that established Australian
businesses are largely unwilling to go the whole hog in using the
internet. As a result they can either set
their prices in a manner that provides Australian consumers with the knowledge they’re
obtaining goods at a cheaper rate that the bricks and mortar retailers that is
sufficient to change their purchase patterns and nothing more. Matters aren’t helped by the way Australian
music retailers have approached the issue.
From what I can see for example, JB HiFi doesn’t even sell mp3s,
preferring to flog its streaming service.
For a business that was initially sustained by customers who wanted to
buy music in a physical form, this is a particuarly odd stance.
All of this provides a context, rationale,
call-it-what-you-will for someone to actually want to download digital music
for free. I decided that, not only did I
not have had a problem in doing this, I had practically been forced into it. My justification was as follows: all I’m
seeking to do is to replace vinyls and pre-recorded cassettes with a digital
version I could burn to CD as the CD versions either do not exist or are not
sold in this country. Therefore a free
download is justifiable given I’ve already purchased the music in question, was
only seeking to update it into another format and did not have the means to do
so at a reasonable price, if at all, in
this country.
This led to my second disaster as a result of downloading
one such program. Big mistake. After doing this, I found that the service
didn’t even come close to finding any of the albums that I wanted to download
and so decided to delete it. Finding the
uninstall program was difficult enough and a few hours later had succeeded in
deleted only part of it. Unfortunately,
the program had hijacked my browser and I needed to find a solution to
that. After a couple more fruitless
hours on the net, it suddenly dawned on me that I had a software protection
package. Feeling completely idiotic, I
ran it and my problem was solved. Exit
stage right free digital downloads.
Sunday did not begin well as I absorbed news about the
previous night’s Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds gig at the Myer Music Bowl. In view of the major shows I’ll be attending
later this month, I decided to give this a miss. After all I’ve seen every Cave tour bar one
over the last 15 years or so plus Grinderman. Surely I could afford to miss
this gig? Then I discovered that the
support act was Mark Lanegan and that the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra was also
involved. Did I miss news of these
contributors or were these well-kept State secrets? I decide not to answer this question all that
self critically and go on to enjoy my Sunday, even making a few purchases.
Come Sunday night, I decide to add my purchases onto my iPod
so I can listen to them on Monday. Now I
don’t know what exactly happened next but in a matter of minutes I had wiped
all of the 34,000 songs off it! I know
that reimporting will be a time consuming hell.
Hence, this rant.
