{"id":241,"date":"2010-04-06T21:25:05","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T11:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/?p=241"},"modified":"2010-04-06T21:25:05","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T11:25:05","slug":"optus-music-store-an-open-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/?p=241","title":{"rendered":"Optus Music Store &#8211; an open option"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve often wondered if there was a music store out there that fulfilled my (not unreasonable) needs.<\/p>\n<p>A few years ago I tried eMusic when it first came onto the scene, but didn&#8217;t get into it much as I never really caught on to the subscription model. It wasn&#8217;t the cost, it was my infrequent &#8211; and often sporadic &#8211; music buying habits.<\/p>\n<p>This is what I was looking for in a digital music store:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>DRM free.<\/strong> Note to record companies &#8211; if people want to pirate music they will do it whether the content is DRM&#8217;d or not. If I pay for a song at the very least I expect to be able to play it on any device of my choosing. I&#8217;ve never shared music and never will. If a person buys a physical CD they can then play it anywhere so digital music should be no exception. People will happily pay for music if it is a &#8220;fair deal&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A la carte.<\/strong> As mentioned, I&#8217;m not a regular music buyer so paying a monthly subscription to access a quota of songs is not ideal for me. For music buffs it&#8217;s great. Subscriptions can dramatically reduce the cost per song, but I&#8217;d rather pay a premium to get the music I want on a song-by-song basis.<\/li>\n<li><strong>MP3 format.<\/strong> Sure it would be great to have OGG format, but MP3 remains the de facto standard and will more or less work on any software player or device.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Open interface.<\/strong> To hell with being locked into a proprietary application to access a music store. I want it 100% Web-based and standard. Don&#8217;t care about API access.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Easy payment.<\/strong> The ability to pay via credit card or PayPal would be good.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Recent selection.<\/strong> While I like the classics, having the latest music in the store is really a must, particularly when buying music as a gift for someone else.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Local presence.<\/strong> With the globalisation of the music industry firmly established this may well be a moot point, but if there is a digital music store with a local presence it may be easier to get &#8220;support&#8221; if you ever need it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t think such a service existed up until a few weeks ago when I was asked to purchase a few songs for a loved one. I did some searching and found the Optus Music store at: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.optusmusicstore.com\/\">http:\/\/www.optusmusicstore.com\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Unless I&#8217;m missing something it meets all my humble requirements. The store is &#8220;open&#8221; as anyone can register and buy from it (I&#8217;m not an Optus mobile customer) and it sells ringtones as well (with mp3 ringtone support in today&#8217;s smarter phones this may become obsolete soon).<\/p>\n<p>At a flat rate of $AU1.69 a track and $AU16.50 per album I can purchase what I want at a predictable cost. As I said, It&#8217;s not about the cost, it&#8217;s about the freedom. BTW, what&#8217;s the going rate for digital music these days? Is $1.69 expensive?<\/p>\n<p>So there you have it, I&#8217;m happy to wave the flag for the Optus Music Store as it seems unique within the Australian market.<\/p>\n<p>And don&#8217;t forget the <a href=\"http:\/\/amarok.kde.org\/en\/releases\/2.3.0\">music player to rule them all<\/a> just hit version 2.3. Rock on!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve often wondered if there was a music store out there that fulfilled my (not unreasonable) needs. A few years ago I tried eMusic&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,32,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-customer-service","category-daytoday","category-tech-industry","category-the-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}