The sorry state of digital music in Australia

I've been wanting to vent about this for a while, and it came to a head for me today something fucked.

Firstly, there are a few things I just don't wanna have to put up with - in order of importance:

1. Shitty formats (wmv, aac etc.)
2. Shitty bitrates (i'm lookin at you Mr. Jobs)
3. Shitty ass DRM shitty shit shit (Jobs, Bigpond etc)

Now the DRM thing, as annoying as it is, wouldn't bother me if there was a decent lossless format available, as I'd just have to do my downloading in one hit and burn em to CD for backup's sake.

I tried to legally download 'Get Shaky' by the Ian Carey Project today. I get all my electronic ish from Beatport, so naturally that's where I headed for this. BP had no less than four versions of the single, but I was restricted from purchase in my territory. Gaydom. Props to beatport, but fuck this regional BS.

Amazon i thought. Never tried it before. Australian Credit Card. Can't bounce.

I never fucked with bigpond due to DRM but hey, I thought i'd sacrifice a lil quality and convenience for the ease of grabbing it. WMV only. Get fucked you shitbags.

At this point I considered the devil's pie only to realise that I hadn't installed iTunes on my new notebook. I'm not planning on it.

I'd just installed Media Player 11 and saw it has a store link built in from Sanity's LoadIt. Searched for it (only one of the biggest songs on radio right now in Oz) and nothing came up.

This exhausted my commitment to playing fair. I mean, i get payed to DJ. I write produce and release music with the intent of making a profit. I even own a label and know how hard it is to stay afloat these days. But what the fuck is up? Pirate Bay came through and I still feel bad but i know I shouldn't as it's not my fault the music industry has dragged it's feet in updating the business model and delivery method of this content.

SOMEONE NEEDS TO START A NEW DIGITAL STORE.

Where are the dudes from Winamp on this front?