"[The CHOICE report] ignores BigPond Music's 99 cent tracks or $1.49 per track member prices. It wrongly claims Sound Foundation tracks are $1.20, when the Sound Foundation site lists them as $1.40," the spokesperson says.

"The article quotes only non-member prices for BigPond Music downloads. Given that almost half of all broadband users in Australia are BigPond members this is a significant oversight and if it hadn't been made BigPond would have been the cheapest major download supplier in the article."

The licence downloading problems experienced by the CHOICE reviewer were "a short term problem some months back associated with a site upgrade," according to BigPond. The CHOICE reviewer was offered a refund on the tracks which would not play, but chose to reject the offer - a point made clear in the CHOICE report but not referred to in the ITWire article. 

While CHOICE's ratings are based on a "one-off experience", BigPond Music is the second most popular music download service in Australia, according to BigPond, offering "greater utility, information and news on the music industry than other download-only sites".

"The article compares oranges with bananas," said the BigPond spokesperson in an effort not to name Australia's most popular music download service.

RIGHT OF REPLY: CHOICE magazine defends report canning BigPond Music {moscomment}

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