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Most of you wouldn’t go near Bigpond, but just in case you are lured by the slightly cheaper prices than iTunes – don’t be.

I recently built a new computer. I transferred a hard drive with all my data (including music) from the old machine to the new.

For music purchased from the iTunes store, I simply de-authorized the old computer before decommissioning. Once the files were available to the new machine and iTunes installed, the first licensed track I played asked me to authorize the new machine. All done. You can have up to five authorized machines.

For music purchased from the Bigpond music store… completely different matter. Whilst I had a backup of the licenses, it seems that the license only allows for playback on the machine which originally downloaded the music. So, if you get a new machine, you’re stuck. Despite the Bigpond FAQ suggestion that you can transfer the license, you can’t.

The options are:

1. burn any purchased music onto CD before decommissioning the old machine. Then you would have to rip them onto the new machine. However this is illegal (see last two paragraphs).
2. call Bigpond. Wait on hold for the standard 20+ minutes (best to ring late at night). The “never-helpful-I’m-a-subcontractor-you’ll-have-to-talk-to-billing-I-can’t -do-that-I’m-not-authorised-to-do-that” tech support person will agree to re-issue the licenses. However, then you need to download each track again. Internet Explorer will prompt you with security notices about downloading files. There are several clicks before your file starts downloading, and you can’t do more than one at a time. (I didn’t buy whole albums from Bigpond, because for whatever reason they couldn’t add up and buying an album as single tracks was cheaper than buying the album.)

The tech support person saw the problem in this. As time goes on, more and more people, with larger and larger music collections are going to need a new PC. And they’re each going to have the same problem as me. Whether burning to CD is their solution, or downloading all the files again – the situation is very inconvenient.

Apart from this particular scenario, the Bigpond license is far more restrictive that Apple iTunes. I went looking for the licensing information on the Bigpond site, it’s actually hard to find, tucked away in a feature. Bigpond limits the number of times a file can be burnt to CD (twice) and you can only transfer twice to two different portable music players! You can start to see the limitations here. And, the Bigpond Music store interface just plain sucks.