AllofMP3 Outsources Marketing to U.S. Government

October 7th, 2006 at 5:03 pm

Evening Michael, hope you are well.

Interesting that the revenue estimate is that high - I never expected a number that large. Well, I haven’t even thought about it to be honest, but interesting to know never-the-less.

Imagine if Apple/MS/Real/Napster/Etc. did what AOMP3 do - legally too - they would make an absolute fortune. I know AOMP3 also lets you encode in different formats (e.g. ogg vorbis) which is also an extremely attractive feature.

Thanks,
Matt

October 7th, 2006 at 5:55 pm

The absence of DRM is important and I, too, would buy online music to that didn’t have DRM. But I have to wonder how much of their success is due to that and how much is due to the very low prices. The latter factor can’t be duplicated here - AOM3 doesn’t pay artists, nor do they pay copyright holders any licensing fee so the can be cheap. A legit service here could not eliminate those costs.

October 7th, 2006 at 6:16 pm

Helen - emusic has the right to sell the songs it does in mp3 format. That’s why you find a lot of independent music and not major label.

October 7th, 2006 at 6:26 pm

Besides price, AOMP3 offers a unique service and business model that all US companies could learn from. Base price is based on megabytes , ie, the amount of data you down-load. It’s very reasonable. As some have pointed out, you can purchase an entire CD for less than $3–and that’s DRM-free! Not only do they have a deep catalog, you can choose your bit rate and format (eg ogg, mp3), both of which up the base price. It’s as near to perfect as I can imagine. Can’t wait till the rest of the world realizes that the perfect model already exists.

October 7th, 2006 at 7:05 pm

“neither are available via bittorrent”

I beg to differ. If you’re a member of a private bittorrent tracker like Oink’s Pink Palace, you get the added advantage of both. The bare minimum of encoding is 192kbps, with many albums available in lossless codecs. Then you have to keep a certain ratio–around 1:1–to keep your membership, thus ensuring even the most obscure torrents stay seeded

October 7th, 2006 at 7:42 pm

There are a lot of reasons why DRM-free services should pick up steam in coming years. The major one is that as people buy phones that are mp3-compatible they’ll want to move their digital music over to them. When they find they can’t do that with their iTunes tracks many of them may quickly sour on the iTunes experience.

The Zune launch might also increase demand for DRM-free content in a strange sort of way. Since the Zune isn’t going to be PlaysForSure-compatible there is going to be a lot of confusion on the part of consumers who can’t figure out why a Windows Media file won’t play on a Microsoft device. My guess is that this might lead to a good number of them eschewing DRM content altogether and seeking DRM-free alternatives.

It’s an uphill battle to put a DRM-free service out there (we’ve felt it with our DRM-free audiobook service and I’m sure eMusic and others have had a tough road as well) but I truly believe it’s the future. Let’s just hope that many others start buying into that.

October 7th, 2006 at 8:21 pm

Well if I ran all of mp3, I would simply move my services to a more receptive country. Say North Korea, well… maybe not; but I’m sure there is one less pressurable.

I have a feeling that DRM will kill the music industry much faster than piracy. At least with piracy, someone is listening to music, with DRM, they get nobody’s attention at all.

October 7th, 2006 at 8:43 pm

>and appears to be the only thing stopping Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

well not the _only_ thing if the Republic of Georgia has any say

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.....ontroversy

October 7th, 2006 at 9:37 pm

It is amazing how one company can circumvent entry of entire country into the global trade relations.

So much for music industry, making money hand over fist and no concessions towards confining to the consumer needs but rather stick with greed and nothing else. The business model of allofmp3 is great, in reference to charging consumers per megabyte of downloaded content.

When I buy CD i tend to listed to it in different players, not one specific player, and that is what DRM’d music offers to me. I pay for the product and I owned it, therefore I should be able to listed and experience it anywhere and anyhow I desire.

I’m highly skeptical of the fact that allofmp3 is the reason that Russia cannot enter into WTO, other issues are at stake. It is more like the laws of the land are at stake and AllofMP3 is a escape goat in this case. I’m not saying that they should not pay fees associated with their business practices, but I’m just saying that there are many unpublicized issues at stake with Russia’s entry into WTO, not just AllofMP3 business’ existence as a barrier of entry. It sound so silly that major publications out to be embarrassed for even vesting their time writing about such issues, don’t they have more importance matters to write about.

October 8th, 2006 at 2:44 am

I’ve bought more music in the few months I’ve had an account with allofMP3 than in the past five or ten years.

I’ve also written about the artisits I’ve bought and linked to their actual websites.

Surely this is the sort of thing music companies want to happen, so why do they make it so difficult to listen, and buy, their music?

October 8th, 2006 at 7:17 am

AllofMP3.com rocks. If tracks were 99 cents each, many people would still use the service because of the all the features. Wait ’till “All of Video” comes out.

Oh yeah, most people cannot hear the diff between 128 and lossless. The world is much bigger than nerds who have hearing like dogs.

October 8th, 2006 at 10:34 am

Of course you are… you got 10 albums for less than the price of 2…

Look, lets just drop the pretense that we’re all concerned with IP and artist’s rights, OK? What the success of AllofMP3 shows is that people want music for as close to free as possible and really could care less if the artist gets a dime.

October 8th, 2006 at 12:50 pm

“Look, lets just drop the pretense that we’re all concerned with IP and artist’s rights, OK? What the success of AllofMP3 shows is that people want music for as close to free as possible and really could care less if the artist gets a dime.”

People make it sound like if we are buying our music from companies like iTunes and even the CD’s themselves that the artists are seeing a ton of money. We need to remember that most of the money is going to the record company and that the artist isn’t gaining a crapload of money from the sale of a single disk.

October 8th, 2006 at 1:13 pm

yes

October 8th, 2006 at 1:45 pm

Vladmir

In many ways I think that DRM is a sin and shame: Music and the Arts have a special place in society: they for instance they are one of the few industries that can be promoted on TV, in Magazines, Newspapers etc with out restriction (at least in the UK and Europe): they are not just industries like the Shareholders or Accountants believe.

I don’t support stealing from Bands or Artists, but I don’t like the restrictions placed on me by DRM: I pay for the music and I want (demand) the right to transfer music to my laptop, my PDA, my car and to lend music to a friend (if I do that I’m effectively acting as sales person) without feeling like I am a criminal.

CRM is much too restrictive: I have always wondered why I can’t exchange damaged CD albums/DVDs , if they get damaged, for the cost of the media after all I have bought the licence already.

AofM3 is part of a redressing of the market forces between consumer and the providers: I hope that it will (in its possibly short life) help redress a balance that has swung too far against the consumer

October 8th, 2006 at 6:29 pm

if major labels followed aomp3s model
im sure profits would go up

think about it this way

if someone wants to get a song for both the such and such mp3 player that only accepts such and such formats
they will buy it at that price

if they want more then one format but dont want to do it themselves
they can buy more then one format (and depending if the company offers sales for buying seperate formats the company is making money by copying that song for that person)

October 8th, 2006 at 9:06 pm

“if someone wants to get a song for both the such and such mp3 player that only accepts such and such formats
they will buy it at that price

i think this reasoning doesn’t go far enough. for eg. the ipod plays drm free music. should the business model of AOMP3 becomes more widespread, others will have to compete and adopt the model to survive.

the itunes store may start selling drm free music before other online stores associated with major labels, only because apple has been ahead of the curve since it’s inception.

“if they want more then one format but dont want to do it themselves
they can buy more then one format (and depending if the company offers sales for buying seperate formats the company is making money by copying that song for that person) ”

who’s rich & dumb enough to pay for the same thing more than once, lord of the ring fans? i don’t buy drm’d music and never will. i bought one song from the ITMS, couldn’t burn it as an mp3 and that was that.

surely the record labels would LOVE it if people had to buy their crap over again, look what cds did for their industry! but really, the freedom and quality every succeeding technology brings belongs to the consumer not the seller. content control is evil, evil, evil.

October 8th, 2006 at 10:33 pm

In the dance music world DRM-free digital music is the norm. Look at http://beatport.com
http://traxsource.com

to name just a couple of stores (There are tons).

Beatport provides music in 320kbs mp3s, 192kbs mp4s and full wav.
The music costs more and people are willing to pay it. I’ve personally bought about 500 tracks from beatport.

M

October 9th, 2006 at 11:11 am

Do you really thik the artists get ANY money from the online sale of their music. They have RECORD deals, which I’m sure includes CDs and tapes, but unless they have contracts for downloadable music, you can be sure the record companies have exploited them.
Does anyone else remember when they got the “work for hire” bill passed, that took ALL of their rights away overnight. Saying that they were basically factory workers being paid wages, and therefore no longer owned their own music.
If todays artists were smart, they would dump their current contracts, and post their work to a DRM-free universal music hostings site, and money money directly. Any 11 year old with a computer can MAKE music today if they have talent, you no longer need the labels.
And as far as the artists getting paid, boo hoo, can anyone else here record themselves working once, and hand it in to the boss and expect to get paid everyday, NO. Why does everyone think that artists/actors should be.
If they want to get paid, let them get paid the way they have been since the beginning of time, performing live.

October 10th, 2006 at 6:48 am

I am a bit of the opinion that “artists” should perform “art”. Nowadays, music is Big Business and I would welcome a return to the days when artists made their money by patronage. Specifically, music artists would look to make money from concerts, and free distribution of their music would make their concerts much more popular and hence profitable. I am very much against the idea of buying music because some stuffed-up suit in a Big Label boardroom reckons it could be a money spinner. Let artists make money when their music is appreciated by people - not because a label pushes it with heavy publicity.

Sure, new music will spread by means of a popularity contest, but hey, hasn’t it always been that way? Can anyone think of a better solution?

I don’t download much music, but I’d never buy DRM’d stuff. Goes *way* against the grain. And if neither artists nor labels get royalties or license fees, well to be honest, I couldn’t care less. If you’re not good enough to make money with your music, get a job and make music in your spare time. Maybe one day you’ll make the grade.

f.

February 20th, 2007 at 5:01 am

I wonder why IRAA find IOMOIO.COM legal. Their prices even lower comparing to AllOfMp3. CC or MC never banned their accounts. Iomoio.com quotes Berne convention and Labels can’t argue with that. My guess Iomoio.com would become first legal, cheap DRM free, music seller in the world.