Big Microsoft Australian music announcement on Vista launch day still to materialise.

The date was January 30, 2007 and among the masses of press releases that lobbed into my in-tray that day regarding Windows Vista, there’s at least one that must still raise a rye smile amongst the staff at Microsoft Australia. It’s the one entitled “Want the entire Sanity Music collection on your Windows Vista PC?”

One of the sweeteners sold as a reason for Australian consumers to pick up a copy of Windows Vista was the ability to get straight into the vaults of Sanity Music from with Windows Media Player 11 and buy all the music you want faster than you could say “no more Internet Explorer”.

Despite the fact that the Microsoft press release said the store wouldn’t be open until April 2007, Windows Business Group director, Jeff Putt, was already talking up the idea.

“It’s like having the best music store you’ve ever been to, with the most helpful staff you’ve ever met, right there on your home PC. The new Sanity service will give you access to all the music you could want, more than a million tracks, 24x7, as well as information on bands and playlists.”

The release went on to say “The Sanity service will give Australian Windows Vista customers access to more than 1 million tracks to download via Windows Media Player 11 (WMP11) and will offer both subscription and purchase options when it goes live in April 2007.”

Microsoft gushed forth rivers of praise for Sanity.

“Sanity is the leading music retailer in Australia and the Sanity brand has meant ‘music’ to Australians for 15 years.  We are truly excited to partner with them to bring this service to our customers,” said Tracey Fellows, newly appointed managing director, Microsoft Australia. “Best of all, the Sanity service is a home grown offering that will feature not only the latest international music but many Australian artists and playlists that reflect Australian musical taste and culture. It will give Australians a world-class, personal music service right there in the home on their PCs ready for transfer to their portable music device.”

This was to be big news for Microsoft and Sanity Music with the serviced billed at the time as the first outside the US.

Well, April came and went and no Sanity Music service.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on May 28 that the service had been delayed until mid-June. At the time, a Sanity spokesperson declined to comment to the SMH on what was causing the delay.

It’s now October 2007 and still no word on when this “integrated online music subscription service” is going to happen and I think you’d probably have a hard time getting anyone from Sanity to talk about it now.

Microsoft doesn’t often get it spectacularly wrong but I can’t help but wonder what happened to cause this plan to go so horribly pear-shaped.