Sponsor's Message

Okay, that's hardly news or worthy of note is it? What is worthy of note however, is the outrageous prices that are being charged for some of these downloads.

Take the Vodafone 3G music download service for example...

How much would you expect to pay for a single track that could be downloaded onto your 3G mobile and (only) played on that device?

Well let's see... it costs US$0.99 to download a track from Apple's iTunes service and the Kiwi dollar is about US$0.70 so you'd think that somewhere around $1.50 would be about right wouldn't you?

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination.

Sorry -- try more than *twice* that amount.

Yes, according to this page, Vodafone will charge you $3.50 to download a full music track -- even if that "full track" is one of those sub 3-minute pop songs from the 1960s that you can now buy in two-CD sets for $5 in The Warehouse's bargain bin.

That $3.50 per track works out at more than $50 for a 15-track CD's worth of music.

I thought I'd check on Telecom's pricing for the same service and found that they don't have one. this page lists all the Telecom mobile "entertainment" services and there's no downloadable music there.

I guess Vodafone's prices prove that when you have no competition then you can charge whatever you feel like for a service.

But maybe it's not Vodafone's fault that their catalog of 300,000 downloadable songs is priced so high -- after all, I read that Steve Jobs has called the recording industry "greedy" now that they want to hike the prices for tracks sold through iTunes.

You'd think, now that they've finally got some legitimate channels for delivering their product through data networks, the music industry would be happy and even prepared to enjoy the economies of scale that such a system has to offer -- but no.

Instead, they seem to be looking at ways to further leverage their monopolies to gouge the market.

If they just spent some of the money they're pouring into lame (and ineffective) copy-protection schemes on offering the customer better value then everyone would be far better off.

I'm glad that I've already bought all the CDs I'm ever likely to buy and that I've reached an age where contemporary music doesn't really hold much attraction any more.

Unlike younger folks, I'll be happy to listen to my existing collection over and over again, supplemented by listening to or watching the occasional video on C4.

Back to Vodafone's service -- I really can't see why anyone would pay $3.50 for a music track that is encumbered with hard DRM and can only be used on their mobile phone (with its intrinsic fidelity limitations) when, for less money, you can buy a CD which works on your stereo or may be ripped to digital format for your iPod, mobile or MP3 player.

Have you spent any $ on downloading music from Vodafone's service? Would you ever bother?

Go have your say in The Aardvark Forums

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

Contacting Aardvark
I'm always happy to hear from readers, whether they're delivering brickbats, bouquets or news tip-offs. If you'd like to contact me directly, please this form. If you're happy for me to republish your comments then please be sure and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!