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There are at least two online music stores for Australians to use. http://bigpondmusic.com/home.asp and http://www.destramusic.com/.

Sure, they are both Windows only (and they both suck), but they are there. Personally I use www.allofmp3.com in Russia. See today's Age newspaper for more details.

We're also stuck with the not-in-the-US-then-you-can't-get-this-cool-thing problem here in .au. Its especially annoying with services like iTunes, which for me, is something that I'd use regularly. I'm about to invest in an iPaq with the goal of buying a lot of eBooks (actual softcover paper books cost like AU$25 now - the new Tom Clancy was _$50_ in hardcover when it was released, are you kidding?!). I forgot to check to see if I can buy eBooks online, so hopefully I can.

If not, I'm giving up on waiting for the world to get their ass into gear about it, and I'll do whatever I can to get these eBooks (and iTunes/Napster/whatever is best at the time tracks). Fortunately I have relatives in the US, so if worse comes to worse, I can get them to run a proxy there and use their billing details to do it all. Still, I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO. The whole point of this stupid Internet thing is that its global.

Incidentally, there are a few online music retailers in Australia. Destra Music and BigPond Music. Both of these only supply heavily DRM'ed WMA versions (which I've heard are at a fairly low bit rate), so most people with a clue aren't interested (not to mention their range of music is extremely limited).

I've spent a good chunk of time in the last couple of months trying to figure out what is involved in setting up a legal online music distribution thing - either for streaming/Internet radio or to sell music - our company is one of the largest content distributors (via our mirrors sites) in Australia so I think it'd be something we'd be good at.

However, it is practically impossible to find out what you need. While APRA, the company responsible for licensing the musical work, have been quite helpful, that is only half of what licensing you need - you also need to license the mechanical work (the recording). At this point in time, no one in Australia represents record companies to do this (eg, there's noone like the Harry Fox Agency in Australia). There's the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia, but they don't issue licenses for online applications (apparently, they will be "in the next few months"...).

So, as far as I'm aware, your only option is to try and contact the record companies (each one) individually (this is what APRA told me almost straight off the bat, but I didn't believe them, so kept researching). Of the several I've tried to contact, I've had no reply (not just email - even leaving phone messages with the appropriate licensing department and not getting called back). I've contacted the Harry Fox Agency - apparently they do international licensing - but haven't heard back from them either.

To me, its no wonder the state of the industry is in such a state of shenanigans. You probably have to drive a dump truck full of money up to these guys to actually get their attention. The pathetic options available everywhere outside the US are obviously not enough to stop people pirating music - why would you bother when you're going to get a superior product (if you don't mind a bit more searching, of course) for free?

This is very similar to a story a few days ago about Destra Music, the first online music retailer in Australia. Destra turns out to not really be a retailer: when you visit their site, it asks you to select from 9 familiar bricks n' mortar retailers. Then you're taken to that retailer's "store," which is identical to the other 8 retailers' stores except for the logo and theme colours. That is, instead of a single ITMS or Amazon-style store, we have 9 cloned, prefab stores.

What benefit does this hold for the consumer? The only one I can think of is that people who have particularly warm fuzzy feelings about one of these retailers can choose them over the others.

The real reason behind it, I suspect, is channel management. The record industry doesn't want to upset the retailers, so they're helping them remain at the cyber-storefront -- even though the retailers have no expertise (or real interest) in online sales, and nothing to offer of any benefit besides a logo.

The Destra Music site is awful -- it looks like a 16-year-old kid whipped it up in his lunch break. And it will probably stay awful, because none of these 9 retailers have any incentive to improve it -- why bother, when your competitors are using the same software?

Prefabricated music stores might work out well for LoudEye, just like Cisco did pretty well out of the tech bubble. But the consumer doesn't need a proliferation of near-identical stores.

I dislike DRM, but I dislike it a whole lot more when its proponents just straight out lie. Quoting the DestraMusic site,

DRM (Digital Rights Management) is the process in which digital content (audio, video or documents) is securely delivered to consumers over the Internet.

Bullocks.

Of course as others have said, the service itself is insulting: $2AU per track for lossily compressed (128mbps!) music that I can't play on my non-Windows computer, or use on my iPod. Thrilling.