Does anyone here use allofmp3.com? Its a Russian site where you give them like $20 to open an account and then get to download cd's for about $1.50 each. Individual songs are pennies. I signed up about a month ago and it has worked flawlessly. CD's are all great quality and the selection is pretty good. I recommend it but am at the same time wondering if it's too good to be true. Anyone else using this site?

There's no simple answer to your question, H.

The technology behind sharing and selling music digitally (especially across international borders) is advancing much faster than the law and international agreements are keeping up. This particular service has been exploiting that lag for some time to the consternation of most of the familiar U.S. and international players.

I'm not an attorney, but these sorts of rights issues are occupying an increasing amount of my professional life. The argument in favor of the service is that they're exploiting a whole series of legal loopholes. From this layman's perspective, that argument is without merit. Realistically, though, they're operating within a system that is unlikely to punish them anytime soon without considerable pressure from governmental entities that have much bigger political issues to address.

From a personal perspective, I believe what they're doing is little different from straight peer-to-peer file sharing. The dollars you pay to purchase music from them is more an investment in obtaining your music with a reasonable expectation of keeping your PC free of malware than a payment to the owners of the various rights to the songs be they the artists or the music industry.

Unlike peer-to-peer networks, however, if and when the hammer falls, I expect it will fall on them, not their consumers.

Me, I'll be waiting on the sidelines with popcorn at the ready because these are truly interesting times in the development of intellectual property law.

Now Playing: On the Media <-- interesting times for that industry as well for many of the same reasons...

I never gave the illegality of it a single thought. I've been using peer to peer services like Morpheus and Limewire for some time knowing they're illegal but taking the chance of not being sued or prosecuted. With billions of files trading across the web, its a risk I've decided to take.

This particular site, however, is just as convenient as can be. I love the practicality of dowloading entire albums at a time, all at the same bit-rate and not having to search song by song. I love that I can be on the fence about buying an album and download it for around $1.00 and burn it to a cd in about 10-15 minutes. And I guess, after reading your post its semi-legal and I feel a little safer about it.

I still recommend anyone here checking it out. I did a google search on it and all reviews came up extremely positive.

I don't tend to subscribe to tin-foil hat theories, but the only caveat I would offer is this. The site is only semi-legal insofar as they're exploiting a set of laws that haven't been updated because their home country has much bigger issues to address than protecting Western copyrights. Given that they're willing to operate in an area that's more than a little grey, I would be very cautious when it comes to your method of payment.

I love Russia and the Russian people as a whole, but I'm about as willing to give out that kind personal, financial information to suspect Russian business ventures as I am to hand over bank account information to those nice Nigerians who keep e-mailing me.

Now Playing: Purdue leading Indiana by one in the first half

Personally, I'd prefer people just using Limewire and Morpheus over this Russian crap. Whereas in Limewire and Morpheus you're giving no one money for what you're stealing, on this site your giving some people completely unrelated to the artists money for some easy coding. You're essentially funding a scam artist, and that just doesn't sit right with me.

I'd like to touch on this thread again because this site is continuing to improve. They now have somebody's list up of the 500 most influetial, or greatest, or whatever albums of all time. Its a actually a pretty thorough, good list and they offer downloads of each of the albums. They've also started listing year end lists from publications like Pitchfork and others and offering downloads of all of the albums on the list.

New albums like Thom Yorke's the Eraser, Sunset Rubdown, TV on the Radio, Islands, etc are being posted for download pretty much the week they are released. And like I stated at the beginning of this thread, all of these are around $1.50 or so for the entire album.

Is anyone else using this? I'm addicted to it.

there you buy mp3 per 0.1$ through e-gold every song
allofmp3-i.com

The RIAA is suing these guys for 1.65 trillion dollars for copyright infringement. It's not legal to use unless you live in Russia, and even then it probably won't be legal much longer.

How they gonna sue them? Through the WTO or something? No one's gonna make them pay. Not unless they threaten Russia with severe trade sanctions or something. Come to think of it, that's probably their plan.

I have no idea how much longer allofmp3 will last, and I'm sure their days are numbered. You can't buy with a credit card through their site anymore and have to use a 3rd party credit card billing company.

I sure as hell hope they stick around and the RIAA could learn a lot from how they do business. I'm not saying that full cd's should be $2.00 like on their site, but DRM encrypted song files from itunes at $1.00 each, at less than cd quality is a fucking joke. At allofmp3 you pay based on the file size, and a 192 kps file costs more than 128K, and you can get up to cd quality. Longer songs cost more than short, so the new Shins cd might be $1.50 while Physical Grafitti is $4.00. They have an enormous library and back catalog.

CD's are history and hunting around Best Buy for an old cd is a joke anyways. This site is exactly how music should be bought in the future, at granted, slightly higher prices. I've been using them for over a year now with just a few download problems which they've promptly fixed. I purchase 90% of my music here, and I've spent more on music because of this site than I ever would have at the cd store. Again, the RIAA could learn a lot from them.

I understand the argument on both sides. The Russians are like, "Good luck suing me. I'm in Russia."

It's actually pretty cool being a part of the early internet years before big corporations get their hands into everything.

I pay at respected sites for my music. .. Emusic charges me a buck a pop regardless of how long the song is. MP3Stor.com (Russian and similar to all of mp3) charges on a sliding scale per song based on song length.

I do give them my credit card for pre paid music. I have never had a problem. I just use the card with a small as hell limit, that I reserve for questionable international sites.

I initially went to mp3stor, because emusic just didn't cut the mustard when it came to finding the titles I was looking for.

There's some intelligent opposition to the Big Guns screaming about property rights in this new age of information sharing.

A cool site with alot of really interesting content is Ubu . Seriously, if you're a geek and want to kill some time, go there. There's a decent take on sharing in a manifesto posted there.

It would be much easier to make a decision about how I feel about downloading music, if the arguments weren't so much in their infancy.

mp3sparks is analog of allofmp3, it has the same owner.
if for you allofmp3 is great than you can use it! But i know more russian mp3 stores than cheaper allofmp3 - check my hub http://hubpages.com/hub/russianmp3site...