Hey all. Some may say 'so what', but here is interesting (or not) news about (cough) allofmp3...

http://www.dailyvanguard...005/10/21/43591cd631d82

This seems a pretty clear violation of antitrust law. It's called overt collusion, and it happens when parties get together and agree to adjusting prices according to NON-MARKET conditions.

This is also plain and simple extortion by the record labels. The article clearly states that Yahoo is responding to the labels, not market conditions. $4.99 was perfectly profitable for Yahoo, but the labels pressured Yahoo to charge more.

But don't worry, this tactic will backfire on the labels by creating incentive to "find ways" to get their music "cheaper". If you know what I mean.

OK I agree you should pay for something and not steal it but digital content and physical stuff are not the same .
When you steal a car you are actually doing damage and leave someone without it . When you get a song or software you just copy it , you don't deprive anyone of it.
As for artist making a living , give me a break. Some are just so rich ... . When I'll see Britney is broke then I'll get worried :). Besides you can actually make music for fun or just to make people who listen to it happy , can't you ? Or is all that stuff artists say about fans and stuf just crap and all they want is to make money ?
Don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong in making money from your work but I think that the music industry and most artists only care about that and don't really give a ... about music and fans .
Just for the record I don't listent to mainstream music anyway .

How much artists make or what they care about is a moot point.

The fact is, the content has been copyrighted, which means it must be distributed exclusively under the terms and conditions specified by the copyright-er (can't think of a better term lol).

"copyright-er"

You mis-spelled "copyright owner".

:P Ya know...fyi. *grin*

I think I'll just continue buying cds. Tried the subscription services but the thing is I like to actually own my music. Besides, Lets face it, music coming from Napster or Yaho will not sound as good as it does coming from a cd.

Same here.

Your right music from these type of services are at best as good as radio. to pay $.99 for a song on iTunes is a bit high. Your better buying the cd and still paying $.99 or less a song.

For those of that are so negative about subscription services, obviously have never tried it. If you have, you would have at least some positive things to say about it. Yahoo! Music Engine offers downloads in 192Kbps WMA, which sound way better than Napsters 128kbps WMA. I have 16GB of music on my Dell DJ, way more than what is on my PC. Each month I can download gigabytes of unlimited music, fast and easy. I am able to download the latest new release CDs, from many artists, and not have to spend 9.99 for each one, like Itunes. I can find old songs from the 60, 70, or 80's, 90's, that I like, and only want to listen to a couple of times, without having to purchase the song, and never listen to it again. I also don't have to waste time searching through some P2P program, and accidentally getting mislabeled 96 or 64Kbps tracks. Everything is nicely listed, and searches come up within 5 seconds. I can enjoy songs that I like, but would not want to spend .99 at ITunes on, or some other company. I really like this compared to digital radio, as I pick the digital songs to play, and have equal or better quality. The bottom line is this: If you like music, and aren't the type to listen to the same CD you bought a 1000 times, this is the way to go. For about the same price you can purchase a CD for, you get access to 1000's of different CDs a month. And no you don't have to re-download them each month, and re-add them to your DJ.

192Kbps WMA vs. Original CD track does not even compare.

Granted, 192Kbps is good enough quality for most people, but I'm anal about having the original.

this was a funny read. Everyone go to allofmp3! then someone going, no! it doesn't support the artists! God what the hell do you expect? Napster, Itunes, all of those services support the labels, not the artist. You really think the 78 or so cents the riaa gets go to the artists only? Someone find me the link where it explains how the money is distributed. Allofmp3 pays the liscences to eskap [sorry about the spelling lol]p to distribute the music through roms or whatever that organization is called. No matter weather you think that it's stealing!!!1111!!!, the fact stands, allofmp3 is legal. Look, the riaa themselves even said that downloading was legal, uploading was illegal, so live with the fact that people can go to allofmp3 and download whatever they want without worry.

...

nope nevermind...

not even worth it.

hahaha... after looking at it and wondering what to write for a bit... I have to agree. it's not worth it...

Trye emusic online there service is really good.
http://www.emusic.com

No digital license either so when you download its for life no issues attached.

I like it a lot been subscriber for a while

Emusic sucks. It's a good premises but I don't enjoy a place where I can't find ANY mainstream music. And by mainstream yes, I mean britney spears and janet jackson.

This whole online music thing is crap. I still purchase CDs from music stores because I feel that when I have purchased something I am well within my rights to make back ups and use in any medium i see fit.

To be limited by digital licences to use only on a single machine or burn to only one disc is total tripe.

For the most part its not even cheaper, paying for a napster subscription for example for a year and then cancelling just leaves you out of pocket.

It's better not to consider it a limitation. Lets look at a couple things. A yahoo me subscription will cost you $120 a year, that's the cost of buying what, 10 CDs?
The difference is I can download 100000 CDs if I want to, and listen to them for that year. I get to pick, and choose and move stuff to my device. I don't like every song on an album, so I just get the 1 or 2 that I like. If I LOVE and artist or an album, then I buy it. I may choose CD, or I may choose the MP3 album, all depends on what I get cheaper.
Now, I dunno about other people but I don't listen to a song for an entire year. Some of my CDs I haven't picked up for 2. I don't care for liner notes, and the lyrics I now get online. I now equate listening to music like having cable tv, so it really doesn't affect me to think 'I want to own my music'. We never really owned our music in the first place (to the definition of the RIAA), and it will be getting more and more difficult to copy CDs and in fact, illegal to do so eventually.
I look at MP3s as the future of music (for me at least) and FLAC for the people with 4000 music systems. And it's like cable tv and premium channels. If you want to have a choice to watch the movies whenever you want, you pay the upfront premium to do it. It saves me from buying the DVD for 14, considering I won't be watching it for a long time, and it saves me 3.99 or 4.99 per title from Blockbuster. It's sort of = to netflix because it only costs about 20 extra.

i wouldn't pay $0.1 for a music single

Try allofmp3.com
Very low cost, legal, huge selection, many formats, online encoding. I've been using this for months.

you forgot: [il]legal.

allofmp3 does not give any money back to the artists whatsoever. Most of their content was probably downloaded over a P2P network.

So you might as well just save your bucks and go with P2P.

What? I guess it's a matter of opinion, But..

Allofmp3 has signed agreements for this with Russian Organization for Multimedia & Digital Systems (ROMS). According to license № ЛС-ЗМ-02-36 the Internet-project www.allofmp3.com, has the right to use musical compositions by providing downloads. Under the license agreement Allofmp3 pays out fees to ROMS for downloaded materials that are subject to the Russian Federation Copyright And Related Rights Law.

ROMS is a member of CISAC (www.cisac.org) - the International confederation of authors and composers societies. ROMS manages intellectual rights in the Russian Federation. All third party distributors licensed by ROMS are required to pay a portion of the revenue to the ROMS. ROMS in turn, is obligated to pay most of that money (aside from small portion it needs for operating expenses) to artists. Both Russian and foreign.

We have received this confirmation from ROMS:

I can confirm the legality of allofmp3.com You can legally buy/download mp3-songs from this site if it does not breaks the law the national legislation of the country in which you will be during that moment Sorry for my english.
Yours faithfully, the assistant to the lawyer of the Russian society on multimedia and to digital networks (ROMS) www.roms.ru.

More here: http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm

Lets put it this way. Maybe it's legal in russia, but if you get caught with them on your hard drive in the U.S/U.K, you will be sued.

Get it now?

Hey. Thanks for the reply. I'm certainly not in a position to argue the leagality of this for the US/UK as I live in Canada, even at that, I'm not a lawyer. I appreciate your concerns and I was only suggesting an alternative.

Yeah, and that's fine. I was merely trying to get people to not take your advice because it really doesn't help anyone but a few thugs in Russia.

I consider it worse than P2P file-sharing because not only are you not paying the artists for their work, but you are also giving the money away to thieves.

The russian version of our legal system found that they were not in violation of any laws. I tried to find something wrong with it because it looked too good to be true, and my research showed that it appears to be perfectly legal.

If it's legal for them to distribute them, and it's legal for you to download something that was legal to be distributed to you, how can you be sued?

I'm not claiming it to be right or wrong, however I think that allofmp3 is on to something.

Of course the RIAA will tell you anything to convince you that it's illegal, however googling for a few keywords related to allofmp3 pretty much spells out that they aren't doing anything wrong.

See, I agree with you about 50% here only because what they are doing with allofmp3 is not illegal in their country.

Yeah ok. My "[il]legal" comment wasn't entirely accurate. They are technically legal (in THEIR country), but still extremely shady and immoral at best.

I just want to make sure people don't flock to allofmp3.com thinking they've found the perfect solution. The artists don't get a dime, and the customers are supporting thieves.

File-sharing over P2P would be better IMO.

This statement confirms it is not legal for everyone:

"You can legally buy/download mp3-songs from this site if it does not breaks the law the national legislation of the country in which you will be during that moment"

I believe the US would fall into that category.

Entirely possible.

Check this out though (it's a link, take it for what it's worth)

http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm

http://www.answers.com/topic/allofmp3-com

Of course, the number one reason that I wouldn't purchase from them is that I don't like giving my credit card number to foreign entities.

Naah, purchasing from a legit US company would be best. Using P2P is just inviting the RIAA to sue you.

I didn't say 'best.' I said 'better.' As anyone who's read my other comments knows, I vehemently oppose illegal file-sharing.

"Legal" or not is a moot point. Just because they failed to prosocute them in the corrupt legal system Russia has, doesn't make the service a-ok.

The main point to purchasing music is to support the people who made it so they can make more music. When you buy music from allofmp3, all you're doing is filling the wallets of corrupt Russian businessmen. So, while it may not violate laws, it's shady at best and does NOT benefit the artists.

So, argue that you use allofmp3 because it's easier than searching P2P. But don't argue that allofmp3 is better than Yahoo or iTunes because it's cheaper and DRM-free. You're talking apples to oranges.

Let's say some Russian company stole some GPL'd code to put into a product they sold. The GPL is probably completely unenforcable in Russia. Does that make it OK? No.

Right, so if some company started selling a repackaged version of OpenOffice and Red Hat Enterprise Linux it would be okay, because software licenses like the GPL are not recognized in Russia?

It still doesn't change the fact that they are stealing from the artists - no matter what the local laws say.

I don't disagree with your comments at all. That's why I only partly disagreed before. :-)

Alrighty...time to dispell all the BS floating around about allofmp3.com...

a) You're not giving your credit card to the Russians, they actually manage payments through a secure 3rd party located in the Netherlands,

b) The service is very legal in the US. Why? You buy the music in Russia, where it is legal, and then you import it to the US. There are no laws against importing music that was purchased legally in a foreign nation,

c) If you question the legality, even the RIAA will have a hard case against you. There are several comments available (search Google, too lazy to link at 4:30 am) regarding the difficulty of taking the site to court, let alone the end user.

In summary: allofmp3.com offers high quality downloads, without DRM, for a minimal price, over a secure and trustworthy connection. It's the best way to get quality music while sticking it to the RIAA. Unlike P2P, they won't be able to take you to court. Everybody wins!

"they actually manage payments through a secure 3rd party located in the Netherlands"

Still a foreign entity.

I refuse to line someone elses pockets with money they don't deserve.

Atleast the people who worked on the music deserve some of the $'s not some other people who had no hand in it. Fsck that, then I'll just pirate all the way.

"Everybody wins!"

Far from it. The artists still lose.

Because "foreign entities" just want to steal your money!

Please allow me to offer my sympathies to Britney Spears, Eminem, Kayne West and... oh. They don't deserve a dime. And do you think the CDs you buy or music you download from American services benefits the artists? Not at all. Talented artists shouldn't be doing it to make mega-millions anyway. Musicians, like athletes, are getting too greedy, and the public is reacting. Don't throw your money at the corruption of the RIAA.

And you know who wins? The consumer. Your attitude is what allows the RIAA to pave over people with obnoxious lawsuits that turn our legal system into a circus of greed.

You obviously know very little about the music industry.

I'm really sick of people listing 2 or 3 insanely rich artists while they ignore the thousands that can't even afford living costs without a second job.

Did you know the majority of music artists make their main income off of a job other than their music recording? Only a very select few can actually afford to live off of their music, and I think that's a shame. Especially since it's the REALLY talented artists that seem to suffer. Don't even get me started on the crap Britney Spears puts out. She doesn't have the talent God gave a rock.

And your logic about how much they get from CD sales is flawed. No, they don't get a lot. So that means we should deprive them of ANY compensation for their music by stealing it? Use your head.

Not necessarily, but if they do, it's a lot more difficult to rectify.

Consumers who "steal" music from small indie groups should be shot. I'm not attempting to justify that. Buy their CDs, by all means. But supporting the big labels and their lack of real talent just hurts the talented artists more.

The RIAA does a great job at screwing consumers and small artists, just to make themselves richer. It's sick.

Bingo.

I'll agree with that.

I don't buy mainstream music because I don't listen to it anyway. Mainstream music makes me nauseous. I have this strange dislike for bad-music-induced vomiting.

"Consumers who "steal" music from small indie groups should be shot."

LOL. So, it's OK to steal music from RICH people, but if you steal it from struggling artists, they should be shot.

Pfft. You should be shot, you moron.

I hate the RIAA, yes. And lord knows I wish that consumers would boycott CDs going through these major artists, because I do agree that something should be done. But to say it's OK to steal, dependent on how much an artist makes is just completely and utterly ridiculous. Talent or not, these major artists must have SOMETHING about them to make them THAT popular, whether it be a bubble gum beat or exposure on TRL, people who cannot sing or perform, do not make it in the music business, period. So despite the fact that you may hate britney and madonna and decide in your own rights that they cannot sing, and so should not be paid for their work, is pure sh%t.

I listen to ALL kinds of music, and I think they all should get paid for their work. For now, the neceassary evil is buying into the gluttons at the RIAA, since that is, the only way to get the money to these performers. Until something better comes, I don't think the solution is to steal music, even if it is under the 'cloak' of legality.

I agree with you ...mostly.

The double standard is stupid yes, but some artists actually don't have talent.

If you know the right people and have enough money to begin with, you can produce the stuffing out of a frog and make him/her a best seller (no Jamster jokes plz =p).

I have always been and will always be against stealing music - no matter who the artist is.

Did I say that people should steal music? It's good to see that you have to resort to name-calling. Weak.

If you -read- above, you'll notice that I'm referring to allofmp3.com, which, from a legal standpoint, is NOT stealing. The service does play license fees which feed down to the record companies here. It uses the same system for royalties as Russia radio. I guess turning on the tunes in Moscow is stealing too, huh?

I love your logic and language. You win the BN medal for losing your cool, tool!

Illegal?

According to? (carefull..that's a trick question.)

;)

Seriously, I want to point out that your assumption "downloaded content over a P2P network" is unfounded.

That said...

Yes, the United States has certain laws that would prohibit a company like AllofMP3 from existing within our borders. Thing is, it doesn't. It's in russia. Our laws are meaningless there, so no, in that regard it is *not* illegal.

That said... You know how I feel about piracy. Thing is, I've used AllofMP3. Paid my $10 and downloaded about $3 of music so far.

Why me? Of all people?

Because there is no law being broken. Not yet, anyway. No case has been brought before the courts, no judgement made.

Ethically, it's a quagmire... On one hand, you know for a fact the artists aren't getting squat. On the other, you're actually paying for it.

Claiming that copyright makes it illegal doesn't hold, since copyright, as it is held in the US, does not apply in Russia.

*shrug*

I hope AllofMP3 does one of two things:

1.) Increases cost to pay percentage of profits to artists. Right now, they charge ~.02 a Meg. They could charge .05 a Meg, double their profits, keep most of their users, pay the artists, and probably gain *more* users by becomming gobally legit.

2.) Teach RIAA that it can be done. Money can be made by selling music the way we want it, and at a price we can all live with.

No matter what, if AllofMP3 starts a major online ad-campaign, services like iTunes and Yahoo are going to be in trouble. They look professional enough, the service is excellent, the options above and beyond what anyone else has even considered.... It's hard *not* to like 'em.

Er...

On the optimistic side...

This service provides so many options, at such a low price that RIAA will hopefully be forced to acknowledge that maoney can be made on a service like this, and at prices we can all live with.

Once the business model proves successful, even doubling the cost would keep them leaps and bounds ahead of any other service and allow profits to be pushed to the artists.

From above:

"ROMS in turn, is obligated to pay most of that money (aside from small portion it needs for operating expenses) to artists. Both Russian and foreign"

Seems to me that all that is required for artists to make their share of profits from this service is to collect it from ROMS. Hell, with various artists speaking out against RIAA in the US now, it wouldn't suprise me at all to see them jump ship if they knew the opportunity existed.

Unless you live in the 21st Century and have a credit-card. I'd be pretty ahrd-pressed to find a credit-card company that does not guarantee the end-user 0% liability on all fraudulent purchases.

The only thing one would worry about beyond that would be identity theft, which requires precautions everyone should be using when purchasing online..even within your own country.

The amount of users, and the amount of credit processed via Chronopay, their payment service, seems to indicate through lack of complaints that the service is actually dependable.

Its enough to drive people to just download them off of the net for free. It is partly because of higher prices that people were downloading music for free off of the net to begin with. Don't these cretins realize this?

I knew this was going to happen. The second I saw the studios going after itunes....I knew something was up. Greedy @#^&#&@&$@ers.
I've been a happy member for 5 months and I'm going to lock my rate in, since it's doubling for 1 year, I might as well buy 2 in advance right? lol. Anyway, it's not the cheapest, musicmatch is (STILL 4.99), but it doesnt have as many songs and that kinda scares me. Also, I have no idea if the music and transferrable to a device, and that's the point of having the service.

Yahoo own musicmatch.com afaik and it'll probably follow suit shortly.

You can just use muvaudio.com to put yahoo music files on your portable device

glad i just signed up about a month ago =D

Damn greedy.

This will be a swift kick in the pants. $60/yr to $120/yr, and still it's just rental fees.

Starts to make you wonder if SatRadio might just become more prevalent...

Knew it had to happen, but it's still the cheapest.

Anyway, it doesn't matter to me because I still buy CDs. I don't want to pay money for compressed audio, and I want to be able to copy it to my MP3 player without a bunch of DRM hassle.

Ture, DRM is a hassle. I usually just buy up enough to burn 2 or 3 cds then rip em back to MP3 and/or ogg. After than I can transfer em to my mp3 player at will and am able to listen to em under windows or Suse Linux, which ever I happen to be running on at the time i decide to listen.

Yet another reason not to use their service.

Now, not only can you not keep the music but you must pay double monthly for it.

LOL

Still cheaper than alternatives though!

Yeah, I suppose so.

the concept of paying for music still baffles me! lmfao

Why? It wasn't "baffling" to pay for CDs, and before them cassette tapes, and before them vinals. So why should that change with a new format?

Ok. I hope you don't mind when I take your car then. It baffles me why I should have to pay for a car.

'lmfao'

I think his point was that if it's as easy to get a car as it is in GTA, why buy a car.

For a person without morals, a conscious, self-worth, or any semblance of character, I guess there is no reason.

Zing!

Leave me out of this.

hey, i download free music! And i have morals too!!! ... somewhere....

Shall we discuss the RIAA's "morals"?

The RIAA's morals are not in question here. They have nothing to do with this.

Musicians, they should work for nothing? What planet are you on?