Having spent the latter part of yesterday and much of last night facing a feeling of impending doom, if the news that Moogis won't be webcasting this year's Wanee Festival is the worst thing I hear all week I won't exactly be a happy camper but I will be more than a little relieved.
In the big picture, compared to earthquakes, cyclones, floods, nuclear disasters and impending financial meltdowns the failure to deliver a webcast is pretty small beer, but serves as a timely reminder that things aren't as close to done and dusted in the wonderful world of digital downloads as they might be.
Now, I'm the first to admit that my experience of Moogis has, overall, been a positive one. Sure, there were issues at the start of last year's run, and I really should have checked that I had the latest versions of Firefox, Safari and Flash Player before the first show this year, but overall things have, at least from where I'm sitting have run reasonably smoothly.
At the same time there are a couple of substantial elephants in the room when it comes to issues like delivering what you commit to and customer support, and I suspect that the overnight announcement re. Wanee is probably the death knell as far as next year's New York run is concerned.
Irate Stateside customers will probably find my perspective on these things at least slightly alien, but then again I'm faced with a situation where I'm not going to get much change out of a thousand if there's a concert I want to attend and Madam decides she wants to go too.
Even as a solo effort, at a minimum of hundred for the ticket, another hundred for a return flight to the south, another hundred at least for overnight accommodation and the same for meals, transfers and incidentals I'm not going to get out of a concert for less than $400, and that's assuming an air fare from Whitsunday Coast to Brisbane is available at $49 one way.
On that basis $233 for thirteen nights of Moogis looked good value.
But it's all about what you're asked to pay, what you're willing to pay, how much of what you pay for actually arrives and whether you're happy with that delivery.
It seems obvious that anybody who wants to start up a business that is going to require customer support is going to have to spend a substantial sum in staffing and training those working in that department and ensure that there are enough people on hand to handle incoming issues.
Try to do that on the cheap with minimal resources and you're literally begging for trouble.
Now, I've had no need to call on Moogis customer support, and I get the impression that I may have been lucky in that regard, but I've had enough issues with similar institutions to know what I'm talking about.
My experience with Australia's largest telco, Telstra, suggests that a call for customer support that's answered by someone with a subcontinental accent almost never leads to the issue being resolved.
Those nice voices that ask you to describe the problem you're experiencing before they pass you on to the appropriate department never seem to get it right, and, in my experience, you find yourself slowly stating that I … need … to … talk … to … a … person.
No, Moogis is, when you look at the big picture, very small beer.
We're currently having a number of issues down this way that have large numbers of Chicken Littles running around crying that the financial sky is about to fall on our heads.
Those Antipodean cries of impending doom variously involve the Carbon tax, the National Broadband Network, the cost of water reform (which seems crazy given recent flood events, but is going to need to be tackled some time), the fate of the Australian wine industry and rural communities in the areas that would be affected by those reforms, Australian retail outlets threatened by overseas on-line merchants and so on.
And on, and on.
But the key issue is that all these things, from Moogis up, cost money, and if they're going to survive in the short term and prosper in the longer term they're going to need to persuade people to shell out the relevant quantity of readies.
To me, the most significant thing about Moogis was the chance to catch a glimpse of what's possible a bit further down the path in the digital domain.
Now, there's absolutely no doubt that there are a large number of people with a substantial investment in traditional media and retail outlets who really should be wearing their brown trousers as things shake out along the line.
It's obvious that as things shake out there are big changes on the way, and that people are getting accustomed to getting a swag of stuff for not much money in an environment that's not going to be sustainable in the long term.
The problem is, however, that eventually there are bottom lines that have to be met, and doing that is going to mean a lot of people will be asked to shell out a lot more than they have been.
In the meantime, of course, there's the very real danger that a mixture of arrogance, incompetence, consumer reluctance and technical issues will see the baby going out with the bathwater.
Odds on Moogis in 2012, anyone?
