allofmp3.com
 

This topic has come up in another thread but I thought I'd start a new one devoted soley to it. I am a big fan of the apple music store but for some stuff allofmp3.com is WAY cheaper.

I did a bunch of googling and found what appear to be independent reviews saying that they had good dealings with the company and that there hadn't been any fraud issues with the payment company.

So far, so good. Anyone else have any experiences (good or bad) to share? So far my only complaint is that the interface for managing the downloads isn't all that hot -- but for the price I won't complain.

Gotta jet! I have some more old Depeche Mode in my queue. :)

I've been using them for six months or so with zero problems, payment or otherwise.

For downloads, you have to download their allofmp3 explorer software. Once you have it, you don't even need the website anymore. It manages your downloads in the background, lets you search and browse with a much better and faster UI, and displays your current balance. The only thing missing is the recommendations/other people bought feature, which I kind of like. But you can hit the web once in a while when you're curious.

It took me two months to burn through the first $25 I spent there. :)

I too am happy with iTMS but sometimes the songs or artists I'm looking for are not in their library.

So first off, is allofmp3.com legit in the sense that they pay royalty to the artists or might I run afoul of the RIAA if I download songs from them? Secondly, how extensive is their music inventory and what genre do they specialize in?

I don't think you can run afoul of the RIAA. Check out this link for more details: http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm

The music selection is hit and miss. It's not near as extensive as iTMS but it's about 20X cheaper and doesn't come with any technological restrictions (like Fairplay) on how it's used.

Your mileage may vary, but so far they've had around 50% of what I was looking for. Not good enough to keep my business at "normal" prices, but at their rates, I am willing to pick through their stuff.

The explorer program that they offer (mentioned above in alanw's post, works in the Windows environment only, so I haven't tried it out.

I am not sure if the artists recieve any royalties. If they do, it's not much, I'd guess. I don't feel bad about it though. If it's truly legal, and my research indicates that it is, hooray for me! Depeche Mode never thought twice about charging me crazy sums like $18.99 for a new release that had songs on it from previous releases. Now it's my chance to get music significantly cheaper.

I don't like the idea of stealing music -- but I don't mind using export law loopholes to get it on the cheap.

Just my two cents,
-eastwest

My understanding is that they're paying royalties for each download on the same scale as if it were played on the radio in Russia.

Download without fear of the RIAA comrade!

Regardless on how safe your credit card is, I still think it funds the Russian mafia somehow. ;) :D

I use RealRhapsody, but all3mp3.com might be an excellent supplemental for my iPod.

Question...
 

What is iTMS? Is it iTunes Music Store?

:)

Yup.


So an album costs ONLY $0.50? a song costs ONLY $0.05?? :confused: Sorry if I sound too skeptical but y'all know the old saying: if it's too good to be true...

Well, it's true, but it may be too good anyway. Depends how you feel about things being "legal" on the basis that confiscating the performer's work has been legalized in Russia.

(Loose analogy: The nation of Nowherazil passes a law that says robbing red-headed people is legal. You go there, rob a red-headed person, and bring the proceeds back to the U.S. and buy dinner. You have broken no laws.)

The nicest feature of allmofmp3 (aside from NO DRM) is that you can choose encoding formats including lossless, RAW CDA, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, MP3, and Windows Media, and the bitrate. I usually download 256kb MP3 files, so wind up paying more. Depending on the album this can be as high as 85 cents!

That's exactly why I stopped using allofmp3.com, even though I liked it very much.

For those of you reluctant to give our comrades in the former Soviet Union your credit card number, allofmp3.com's paypal link is now working again. ^ ^ ^

When I login I get:

PayPal
Sorry, service temporary unavailable.

Alas, payment through paypal is still "temporary unavailable." (sic)

If you have a Citibank credit card you can generate a single-use credit card number for depositing money to your allofmp3 account.

I have never used them to download music but I just checked out their website and was very impressed.

Looks like they have their own lossless format. Are there converters available to go from their lossless format to wav, and/or does dbPowerAmp understand their lossless format?

Thanks,
David

Weird. Paypal is enabled for me. I just sent $50 yesterday, and it still shows as an option as of 5 min ago.

They now have a discount program too:

They offer 5 lossess formats, all of which are based on an industry standard codec:

Monkey's Audio Lossless
OptimFROG Lossless
FLAC Lossless
PCM Wave
WMA 9 Lossless

Most computer based players out there will understand these formats (usually thru a plugin). You'll have less luck with portable players.

I currently use flac. (I'm re-ripping everything I own into flac, and then create whatever I need at the momentm, while keeping the flac file around.)

Thanks for the info. flac is perfect for me. Perusing their site, it seemed to me that they had their own lossless format.

-David

I use this site all of the time because fo the low cost and the fast downloads. You get to pick the compression format you prefer and they have a ton of songs. Who cares if the site is in Russia? Most people don't even know where most servers are that they transact on anyway.

i really don't know of any cheaper similar sites, unless you want to use bit torrents which is cool but takes forever to get the downloads you want.

BTW- I can care less about all that copyright stuff or the record companies getting every penny of a royalty.
Before Napster i was getting a ton of music through the bulletin boards and MIRC. Who the heck wants to pay $15 for a CD of 15 songs and 10 of them are crappy?
Also spending $1 a song for a crippled Itune is complete nonsense. You have to be insane to spend $1 for a poor quality piece of data that restricts how u can use it. I would spend the $1 on a completely lossless format, that I have complete use of but your talking +20mb of pure CD quality.

I get a good chuckle when my Ipod using Itune loving friends gush about the product they use. They don't even realize they are getting ripped off 2x-once for the HD player and twice for the music. I have owned Apple stock for 3 years now so I really do get a good laugh out of it.

I have had no problem with the Allofmp3.com site. I have downloaded about 150 songs. I think I have spent $16. It is a great deal. There is a larger selection of foreign music. I downloaded some French stuff to remind me of my mis-spent youth!
As I understand it the artists get something. To be truthful, a lot of the stuff I download is music I used to own but lost due to breakups, moves etc. I guess I am rationalizing, but so be it.

The Wall Street Journal has an article on Russian music sites. Here are some relevant excerpts:

"...lawyers say buying music from the sites is as illegal as downloading it for free over a file-swapping network. "It doesn't matter if somebody downloads in the U.S. and believes that it's legal because the site tells them so," says Evan Cox, an intellectual property lawyer at the firm Covington & Burling in San Francisco.

...

The sites offer several advantages, aside from price, over their U.S. counterparts. Most allow users to preview an entire song, compared with the 30-second clips on iTunes. Files can be downloaded in several formats (most U.S. sites serve up a single format) and the files have no built-in restrictions on how they can be used or copied once downloaded. Some sites let users download files encoded at much higher quality than U.S. services offer.

...

The site obtains the music it sells by purchasing CDs in retail stores, he said, and receives some albums directly from record labels. He said the site pays licensing fees for the music it sells to a group called the Russian Organization for Multimedia & Digital Systems, or ROMS, which purports to represent Russian copyright holders. MP3search.ru and 3MP3.ru also say on their Web sites that they are licensed by ROMS.

Konstantin Leontiev, deputy director general for legal issues of ROMS, said in an e-mail statement that the group acts "in conformity with the requirements of the Russian laws." He said that the group's activities only cover users inside Russia, and said users outside Russia should consult local laws. He didn't respond to further questions.

...

Going after users of the services could be difficult. "You'd have to subpoena the sites to get their records, and if they're operated out of Russia, it may not be such an easy task," says Michael S. Poster, a corporate and entertainment lawyer at Katten Muchin Zavis Rosenman in New York.

...

Some users of the Russian sites complain in online forums about incomplete albums, poor customer service and slow downloads. One user on iPodLounge shared worries about handing over a credit card number to a Russian company -- some of the sites, including AllofMP3.com, require users to register and "fund" their accounts before they can buy songs.

AllofMP3.com once accepted payments through PayPal, but PayPal shut the company's account down after receiving reports that it sold unauthorized music, says Sara Bettencourt, a spokesperson for PayPal, a division of eBay Inc."

You can read the full article here. [paid subscription required].

The truth is that Allofmp3 offers a better product than itunes and all of the others. Face it you get fast downloads, you pay by the mb and you get to choose the compression format and quality of the song you want. Which do u prefer? 1 crappy Itunes song with a crappy encoded format with limited use for a $1 or an entire album in the format of your choice for $2 ?

I finally installed the Allofmp3 Explorer and loaded a $30 Xrost gift card (which you pay using PayPal). In addition, you get a 10% bonus for loading your account with the gift card, so I got $33.00 (plus the $0.20 registration bonus). I downloaded just over 950mb of music (all done off-and-on yesterday afternoon and evening) for a shade under $20. Great deal, IMO. :)

Allofmp3 just got better...

www.alltunes.com

Since they are still around, and that I haven't heard they are going to be shutdown I am confident I am fine downloading all I want. Why pay $9.99 for an iTMS album, when I can download the same album from them, in the format I want, without DRM for a fraction of the price.

So alltunes replaces the existing AllofMP3 Explorer?

Not sure it replaced it, but it is much better, and much faster. Finding new albums just got much easier.

To support the artists that made the music you're enjoying?

Bah. You support the artists you like by going to their shows, buying their t-shirts, etc. The record execs./labels are making a killing and artists never see their fair share of it.

That said, I buy albums of my favorite bands at their shows. I know all the profit goes to them, and it's usually a few bucks cheaper.

I'm an allofmp3.com fan here, but you do have to realize that it's not really completely legal, it's a gray area. I pay for the quality (the custom audio quality selection is great) and for the ease of having it all in one location, and the speed.

Having seen several episodes of "MTV Cribs", I am convinced they don't need my support.

Many of the smaller bands are not on "Allofmp3", so I'll still be buying some plastic.

As noble as your statement is, money talks. Do you pick the more expensive stores for your CD's? Or make sure to never buy a CD when it is on sale?

Good points, ScottC.

Also, what about 2nd hand stores and used sales from places like the Amazon.com marketplace and eBay? Why isn't the RIAA "Cracking down" on those sales? No one's making any royalties from that, and I've bought a number of used hard-to-find CDs on the order of $2 + shipping from eBay and Amazon.com marketplace.

Why no crackdown on this?

Museekster: Are artists compensated for the downloads and how does this work in Russia?

Allofmp3: We pay monthly deductions to ROMS. The distribution of the royalties to the authors fully depends on ROMS. ROMS (as well as RAO) distributes the royalties based on sales amount.

Bill Gates has a big house. Is it cool to steal Windows?

Of course not. Does the wholesale price change when an item is on sale?
You say it's OK because AllofMP3 says it's okay? They're not licensed to sell music anywhere outside of Russia. Period.

Quite frankly, I'm surprised you defend them and discuss them on this site. How are they different from one of the torrent sites that charge for access?

That's frequently, but not always, true. So what? That doesn't make buying what is effectively a stolen product okay. I imagine most artists would prefer you buy their album from the legitimate source, rather than paying a shady company selling something that doesn't belong to them.

And therein lies the difference in our opinions. I do not see using allofmp3.com as stealing. In MY opinion it is a legal service. In your opinion it is an illegal service. Lets just agree to disagree on that one, and please excuse me while I go download the new Rod Stewart album.

You had me until you said that.

;)

Allofmp3.com does sell music in Russia. I think that's why people are concerned with buying music from them. People associate Russia with phishing, identity theft, payment fraud, etc. (Right or wrong, that's the perception.)

So it's not that Allofmp3.com is doing anything illegal - when you visit the site, you are buying music in Russia, with the sales transaction executing on a server somewhere inside that country. I would just wonder how secure my data is when I do it. (In fairness, I've never read or heard about them doing anything improper.)

I've thought about using them, I just haven't gone through with it yet due to those nagging concerns about security, even though they are probably unfounded.

Why do you think it's legal? It's copyrighted material being distributed without the permission of the copyright owner. You don't just get to decide that it's okay because it works better for you. You really ought to provide a link showing it's legal outside of Russia. Even allofmp3 doesn't claim that:http://music.allofmp3.com/help/help....gal&rnd=842226

I'd love to hear your rationale for why this is okay but grabbing MS Office from thepiratebay.org or torrentz.com isn't.

What put my concerns at ease is that they don't process their own payments; they have it outsourced to Chronopay; a Dutch based payment processor.

I buy through allofmp3.com and happily handed over my credit card details, I think all cards have some kind of online fraud guarantees anyway. As far as I am concerned I'm paying for the music and the artist is getting some royalties, it's not theft. Someone else can figure out the legality of it and should someone from the record industry here in the UK demand I stop using it with some legal authority, I will. I stopped using napster when it became illegal, I'll go the same way with this.