AllOfMP3 Launches allTunes

March 29th, 2006 at 9:06 pm

I agree that record labels need to rethink their pricing strategies, and I think iTunes is helping them move in that direction. Maybe I’m wrong, but my only concern with AllofMP3 and this new allTunes is that it just doesn’t seem likely that any of the money reaches back to the artist… especially being a russian based operation.

Basically, it boils down to this. I want to buy albums from artists I like. But more importantly, I want to be able to support those artists and help them crank out more good stuff with my purchases. Both iTunes and AllofMP3 do the former, but I think only iTunes does the latter.

March 29th, 2006 at 9:13 pm

You’d have to be insane to download and run an application designed in Russia and with quasi-legal grounds as you state - god only knows what kind of hidden spyware, phishing, virus or other devious code in running behind the scenes without your knowledge! Why not just use morpheus or kazaa and get it 100% but illegal, instead of getting it illegally but sitll paying for it at the same time?

March 29th, 2006 at 9:53 pm

I can attest to what Oliver is saying above. I’ve spent a few hundred bucks through XROST for AllOfMP3 and never had a problem. Plus it gives you a 10% percent bonus on whatever amount you add to your account in AllOfMp3 from XROST. (I think that’s right anyways…)

March 29th, 2006 at 9:58 pm

If you don’t want to risk using a credit card, use XROST, which can take money from Paypal. Remember, Paypal doesn’t hold you responsible for fraud or unauthorized tranactions so you should be safe.

From what I have read about Allofmp3 and XROST, they don’t abuse payment information.

March 29th, 2006 at 10:04 pm

I just read this article from News.com on allofmp3’s legality in Russia.

http://news.com.com/MP3s+for+p.....g=nefd.top

The article is over a year old and Allofmp3s is still up. I am guessing the police decided not to take action?

March 29th, 2006 at 10:19 pm

Re. credit-card use online, not just for this site, but in general: if your bank does not offer “virtual cc numbers” i.e. online generated, use-once, throw-away numbers yet, then it’s time to switch banks.

March 29th, 2006 at 11:51 pm

Jason - We’re about to launch something called ‘Channels’ on our swapzies.com website. This will allow the ‘fan’ to monetarise any digital content they want, with a link directly from their blog to the location where the file is hosted.

This ‘monetarisation’ can be done in two ways, either users pay for access to content for a certain period, or they pay on a ‘per file’ basis. We collect this money, and forward it to you. Users can pay via PayPal.

Michael (and Jason) - Re. the Channels as mentioned above, our first ‘commercial’ channel for swapzies is a music website. This site links, via swapzies, to various file hosting locations, initially to a Russian affiliate.

The big plan is to overcome the ethical issues of AllofMP3 and the like.

In most cases, certainly upon launch, it will be linking to our affiliate site, for the cheap, legal downloads. There is a standing offer to artists though that we will link to their own file if they supply it, rather than the Russian version. This can be monetarised as explained above.

The goal we share with you Mike, is that music needs to be priced for an era of word of mouth marketing and digital downloads - not expensive commercial promotion and CD distribution.

No-one will begrudge paying 10c for a track, but they do begrudge a dollar as it’s too high. Once prices fall, illegal file sharing will be cracked as the incentive to break the law will be gone. The consumer wins, and the artist wins.

More info on this channel can be found at http://www.stridr.com.

March 30th, 2006 at 1:17 am

I have two observations; firstly, will all you xenophobes get a life? Why just because it’s Russian does it have to be illegal, full of spyware, full of viruses and why “they” are out to steal your credit details and steal music from artists? Even when lots of users have stated the software is clean and credit cards have been used successfully for months/years, I bet you still don’t believe it.

Secondly,”Do you think 99 cents a song is unreasonable?” Frankly I do. That 99 cents is simply someone’s guess at the highest price that could be charged, while locking buyers into proprietory player formats and aiming also to wipe out Kazaa and other P2P networks.

AllofMP3 simply guessed that 20 Cents was more realistic, and they are correct. I buy music from them, but I see no reason to share that music with anyone else. I also buy more songs from more artists - I’ve spent zero on Itunes but I do regularly topup my AllofMp3 account.

I believe that’s called “market forces”, and was the justification for years of charging me £14 for CDs in the UK that Europeans could buy for £10 and Americans for £8. I believe that the playing field is now level and that music appreciation, if not the “Music Industry”, will be better for it.

March 30th, 2006 at 1:53 am

I also get my music from AllofMP3 for quite some time now and never had any problems with them.

What they do right, is to offer their cutomers choice. The customer can choose, what quality he wants (lossy to lossless) and pay for what he chooses.

I don’t see a point in spending a lot on high quality audio components like speakers, headphones, receiver, sound boards, etc. to listen to crappy lossy tunes. Yes, with good equipment you can hear the difference!

Here in Germany / Austria you can offer copies of games, nazi-stuff, etc in eBay, but you’re not allowed to link to AllofMP3 - crazy world, isn’t it?

March 30th, 2006 at 2:52 am

I got this little article in my inbox from the Anne Clark newsletter:

“The news is spreading fast on the net and we thought this would interest many of you. Today’s headline on Side-Line magazine is a story on how musicfans from all over the world have been the victim of fraudulous use of their credit cards after having entered their credit card to buy illegal download albums for just one dollar, the so-called ‘MP31dollardeals’. These sites, mostly based in Russia, are active under over 40 domainnames (including the popular MP3sugar, Audio Store, …) and have now started picking victims amongst their clients (believed to be several millions) at random to use their cards for other means. The worst thing: it appears to be that several credit card companies have refused refunding the frauded cards after it was revealed that the credit card users had been buying illegal MP3’s online from these companies.”

Is this a scam?

March 30th, 2006 at 2:57 am

Oh and also:

“… the conventional economic approach to developing-world piracy … is to lower the cost of a product closer to the pirate version, closing the pricing gap to try to win customers over to the official version. In practice, however, the pirate price is so low that it’s rarely possible to close that gap enough to make much of a difference.”
- the long tail blog

It’s probably a losing battle for a legal music service to compete on price with AllOfMP3. Better to differentiate themselves with marketing or well-knownness. Make themselves Coke and let AllOfMP3 be generic cola somehow. Use subscription services to try to snag some of the people who consume lots of music when its cheap, without hurting your sales to people who buy six CDs/50 songs a year, period.

(I figure 99 cents was seen as the high end of the impulse buy point for most people. If you heard a single song somewhere and want to hear it again, what’s 99 cents? A lot of people won’t think twice or dick with trying to get it free, if they’re thinking about it one song at a time. And it was enough of an improvement on the alternative of a whole CD for $15 that you still had to rip.)

March 30th, 2006 at 3:30 am

yes then find out your then restricted with what you can do or play that 99cents song on

then have to go through the hassle
to jump though hoops to activate
different machines to play the stupid 1 DRM file from itunes.

and ON TOP OF THIS pay 99cents
to be restricted haha

or go to allofmp3 get your music
really cheap legal and the best bit
oh yes the best bit.

it plays on what device you choose
not what devices they choose.

it doesnt have restrictions you can
burn it to a cd/dvd you can convert it.

basically you can do with it what u wish
without jumping through hoop’s
tryin to remove the dRM from the
thing YOU paid for.

yes i can see many reasons to pay
itunes for songs that are incompatable with every other device out there.

March 30th, 2006 at 5:42 am

Related to the comments about the quality of music and downloading from Allofmp3 instead of ripping CDs as Michael does, I’d be very interested to know which encoding rate and format do you use?

March 30th, 2006 at 6:51 am

Dear Jason L. Baptiste,

Can I contact you somehow (you are not on LinkedIn). The thing your are describing is EXACTLY what I’m working on right now. It will also include a pre-paid ‘Media card’ for seamless web-based payments (ready).

Could you, please, contact me directly at president@On-lineCard.com ?

March 30th, 2006 at 7:44 am

As to the xenophobia and jokes - you, guys simply don’t know how creative small Russian and Chinese teams are and what “Sputnik” surprises (not one, many of them) are in the works. THAT will make a good joke soon. Very soon.

March 30th, 2006 at 8:40 am

So, basically, those of you who buy from allofmp3.com and who were railing against the RIAA, saying that you really were concerned about the fact that the artists were being ripped off were… lying. Because allofmp3 doesn’t pay the artists…

Face up to it - you’re stealing. Period. You didn’t care about the artists, that was just ethical cover for the fact that you just wanted free music.

Of course, when you go to create your own IP you’re giving it away for free and not taking any of that filthy money stuff, right?

March 30th, 2006 at 9:28 am

@tpp
Kazaa is still around too, and is still pretty popular. However, the popularity does not legitimize it. The business model is still piracy.

That is according to this article at slate.com.
http://www.slate.com/id/2115868/
By Dana Mulhauser
Posted Monday, March 28, 2005, at 3:35 PM ET
Dana Mulhauser is a law student and a writer living in Cambridge, Mass

All legal and fair competitive pressure should be applied to artists/music/content production companies. This includes finding alternatives to the artists they represent; however, people seem to enjoy big market artists and also the smaller market artists they often subsidize.

It’s hilarious given Prince’s history he is actually on allofmp3’s “cover.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10467211/from/RL.2/
For his comments on his latest record deal.

However, if you allow companies who are engaging in questionable activity to compete you end up with various market inefficiencies (telecom for instance). The result is stifling the real competitors that come up with legal solutions to the existing system.

Not to mention you are encouraging illegal/unethical behavior in other content areas by virtue of ignoring the law and rewarding the behavior.

@Mike Arrlington
You did not seem too happy with somebody else violating your work/research/copyrighted written material.

I doubt anybody would argue about someone’s use of your blog postings to make a book for resale without your consent.

What “content” qualifies for the “content should be free” doctrine?
Why is fairly blatant abuse OK in this instance?
What other forms of IP are next because it is inconvenient to pay for them?

March 30th, 2006 at 10:00 am

Did my post just get deleted by a bug?

March 30th, 2006 at 10:26 am

This has nothing to do with mobsters. If you have any doubs read the info at http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm

If I am not mistaken, Allofmp3 has to close down in september, when new legislation will come in to effect.
A least that’s waht I gather from this interview: http://www.museekster.com/mp3searchinterview.htm

March 30th, 2006 at 11:28 am

I have been using the site for a while also. No problems. Bottom line is that they have the best technology, prices, and quality. If your scared because it’s Russian, stop watching 80’s Schwarzenegger movies.