I suspect this is the end of the project.
What caused this project that everyone had such hopes from working as someone deeply involved in the project I would put down these points.
Newsagents are not a destination point for music. Newsagents could sell the product but not market it as they do not get these customers.
To help start it newsagents needed help, in what to them was a new market. Yet many newsagents felt frustrated by what they saw was poor communication by Cardplai.
Competitors that people that want such pre-paid music cards go to are retailers that have known expertise and music departments.
The product well newsagents took on a giant. Although the Cardplai website and range of products were good, it was lacking compared to what say iTune offered. iTunes has almost every piece of music you can want. Now it has more than 10 million different tracks.
What the public often want are dubious legal products like US iTunes cards that newsagents cannot sell.
Cardplai prices were good compared to standard prices but often pre-paid cards have huge discounts. BigPond was offering 50% off prepaid music vouchers through Big W and Woolworths for its BigPond Music service, while Apple is selling $50 iTunes vouchers through Big W for only $30 -- a 40% price cut.
Newsagents could not offer to afford on their margins, such discounts. How Big W can is a question, I would like to know?
Cardplai advertising campaign need for launching such a product was nowhere enough. I am sure millions would be needed. iTune which I mentioned above is owned by Apple spends millions in Australia, worldwide its advertising budget was $US486 million in 2008.
It would have been good for newsagents to carve a niche for themselves in this market, and we tried but like so many projects all we can do is learn and move on.
