Finally, the end of AllofMP3.com - sick and tired of them stealing music from artists and not paying royalties.

Good riddance to bad rubbish I say.

The service may be down now but it has been on life support for months. Paypal and all major credit cards would no longer provide service in turn making it extremely difficult for people to find their accounts.

It’s 6:30am EST and they just came back up

Well that was quick. Its back up now. Thanks Mike, and I just wrote a quick post about it being down. Figures, guess I shouldn’t post about sites being down at 3am.

Shes back up!

Working okay for me.

Back up here in Australia…

If only we lived in a DRM free world

It’s back up donkeys:)

the site may be back up, but the downloads are struggling.

The site is pathetically slow, should be interesting to hear why it was down in the first place.

- Micheal - Techcrunch has been down many times ….

- Ever heard of maintenance? -

- And everyone hates DRM free AllofMp3.com but applauded when Steve Jobs came out and - denounced DRM …

- People are two faced and judemental.

I don’t see a difference between this and limewire or ares? Its ridiculous. They are both heavily accessible.

I don’t see them getting taken down anytime soon, they’re in Russia for chrissakes! And if they do come down, another 10 will pop up right behind them…and once Russia gets cleaned up, the cat ‘n’ mouse game will move elsewhere!

allofmp3 is *legal* according to russian law - and they pay their royalties for the music.

Isn’t it sad, that most people complain about allofmp3 instead about the music industry, which charges multiple amounts of royalties in western countries?

It isn’t allofmp3 which sucks money out of artists (most of them see less royalties than the music industry, if any) - it’s the music industry which sucks money out of their customers…

Really strange: US government tries to shut down a legal service of foreign countries - who is acting illegal then?

Just my two cents…

(BTW.: Doesn’t Irak had weapons of mass destruction, according to US government?)

I’m with roger on this one.

It is legal in Russia and royalties are still getting paid - only difference is everything is fairly priced.

@Roger - It’s “Iraq”. And not only did the US think so, so did France, UK, Spain, Germany and Turkey…. but lets not let facts blur the conversation.

Roger- What kind of royalties are they paying…and why?

Woah Rog.. touchy subject… I’m gunna go ahead and speak my mind for a minute, Yes what allofmp3 is/was doing is wrong… If i were a musician, and i worked so hard creating and advertising my song, or if i were a manager and one of my songs was being handed out and I was not seeing any sort of compensation, I would be pissed off too.

However, Those guys are all rich anyways! Let us not fight over it, they are rich and they will only get more rich. So let’s just be happy for them and all get along and throw a celebration over the demise of allofmp3.

Check out my blog for cool new tech news and gadgets! http://blog.eyebag.ca

Cheers

Rumor has it that the RIAA are going to sue them for lost revenue for 20 quintillion dollars!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....Comparison

AllOfMP3 was actually innovative, even if they were borderline illegal. What they showed was that if the price point is right (perhaps their price point was too low) and the user gets to choose his format and use the purchase on any device of his choosing, there is a huge market.

I’m skeptical about the motivations behind iTunes going partially DRM-free. Like many have already mentioned, EMI seemed to be the main driver and it was a business decision more than a consumer’s rights decision. As far as I know, my friends and I only bought stuff from iTunes in the first couple months of its launch because it was cool. We’ve all stopped now because man, realizing how limiting DRM is when initially we thought “this is not too bad” was a life-changing experience for all of us.

How many times will allofmp3 be pronounced dead? One thing is for certain: Illegal or legal, they have the best, easiest-to-use download site for music. Period. DRM aside, a lot of the other sites could learn from allofmp3.

http://DEBTISDUMB.com

dAMM IT

Russia is one big mystery to us all.

@Jon: AFAIK they used to have a russian license. Please check it at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllOfMP3.com - they say so too.

@erick: you’re right, we shall not go deeper into it, since this isn’t a political board - I want to point to keep a clear mind and try to get background information by yourself instead relying on “official” information. There are always three views: your’s, the others and the one, which isn’t seen by both!

I hate to say this, but knowing the way some of the artists live and the money they get for concert, I don’t feel bad for them and am guilt-free when buying music from Allofmp3.

Over the weekend I tried to refill the account balance using several of the available options and workarounds to no avail. It was an ominous sign. I signed up with MP3sugar instead. The bummer is that I haven’t been able to download @256k - and the track details are usually missing.

Focker, you’re wrong. Sure when you think about someone like the Foo Fighters or U2, you may be correct. But most bands who are out there DON’T make a ton of money on the road. The brand ubiquity requried to push someone over that tipping point into success (Arctic Monkeys) is expensive: Publicists don’t work for free, gas is more expensive than it ever has been, etc. So in reality, only the top tier of artists can make enough money from the road. Everyone else, including indie labels that provide much of the marketing support for growing bands, scrape by on an increasingly smaller margin. Your selfish outlook helps those who make the drek, and hurts the innovators. Aren’t we about the innovators here?

The music companies are stupid! We all want DRM free music at reasonable prices, something they are unable to offer. Allofmp3 provides that, even increasing prices slightly would still be reasonable.

grr! allofmp3 may indeed pay (small) royalties to the Russian copyright collection agency, but I am pretty sure those royalties do not leave russia. In a way, selling something that’s not yours is worse than stealing. i use p2p,so I’m stealing too, but I have bought many cds that I first heard on MP3. So at least they get some money there. I thought I was supporting my favourite artists by going to their shows, too, but I read somewhere that smaller artists struggle to break even on tours. Anyone know if this is correct?

how are you guys paying? i can’t get any method to increase my balance. xrost has been down for a while, too.

Check http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3payments.htm

yesterday, I was using alltunes all morning and it was working great until about noon central standard time. about then, it sputtered to a stop and all the music that i had queued would download but wouldnt actually finish….so i am hoping that it isn’t the last sign of death. but check out songboom.com to refill your balance. you can buy a redeemable gift voucher from them and i haven’t had one fail. yet. i does take about a day for them to email the voucher to you and you probably need to use paypal for this service, but it’s worth it if alltunes will get back up and running again!!

Allofmp3 is selling music at remarkably low prices, and based on there will be suspicion of royalties not being paid.

BUT - here is a FACT:

AOMP3 is L E G A L - meaning its a legal business protected by law.

You can like it or not - but is it fair to attack and sabotage a legal business just because you dont like it ?

You may dislike the acticity of a legal business - but that doesnt mean you can put aside the written laws of civilized society. That would be complete anarchy - thus making you a much worse criminal than allofmp3.

If allofmp3 should be stopped - it will have to be done in a civilized manner - in court - judged by law.

And to all of those accusing allofmp3 of fraud and of not paying royalties: Not one of you has come up with a single piece of documentation - other than the beliefs in your own twisted minds.

Either cough up some hard evidence for your accusations - or shut the f@.k up.

there is a way of using paypal with allofmp3. People are trading allofmp3 gift vouchers on http://www.aom3.org/forum (allofmp3 community forums).

Also good place to notice whether others are able to reach allofmp3 if you can not.

Did anyone notice that Chronopay suspended AllOfMP3 payments not so long ago? As far as I know, short of buying gift cards on the streets of Moscow, they don’t have any other means for people to send money into their accounts.

Chronopay cites the use of a license model called FAIR as a pre-requisite for processing payments for Russian music stores, and AllOfMP3 uses the ROMS license. The difference between the two? In short words, the % of the earnings that are paid as royalties, and the lack or not of independent audits on sales.

This really is getting old. I have used allofmp3.com not because they were so cheap, but because I could buy media and have it work on all of my computers. I run linux, windows, and some hardware media players and MP3 is the least common denominator between all of these platforms.

I would pay the same prices that itunes charges if only I could use the files I buy how, where, and on what devices I wanted to.

Allofmp3.com has been down for another 12 hours or so, at least. Is there word on whether it has finally been killed for good?