Wednesday, November 15th, 2006
Russian MP3 Site
In today's world, the internet has allowed people from all over to get music from online. Whether it's downloading from iTunes or Napster for 99 cents a piece, or getting CDs from online stores that happen to carry nearly every kind of band, like Amazon. Or, some people like to go the cheap-but-not-so-legal method that can get them fined thousands of dollars or get viruses and spyware on their computers from downloading on peer-to-peer networks like Limewire, Win MX, and the now defunct Kazaa. Well, in the last few years there's been a groundbreaking new site that somebody can purchase music from for very cheap prices. That site is called Allofmp3.com.
Allofmp3.com is based in Russia and sells albums about as cheap as the cost of 2 song downloads from iTunes. These guys charge by the megabyte instead of one fixed cost per song. It costs 3 cents per megabyte. That's not all, you can also download from different audio codecs (MP3, WMA, AAC and more for some of the more recently added albums) at different bit rates! That is unheard of for a download site. Most sites only let you download one codec, the standard MP3, with a 128 kilobytes per second bit rate. Now, that file has okay quality, but on here, for a little bit higher price, you can get quality much higher than that. The higher the bit rate, the better the audio quality. And to really put icing on the cake, none of the songs are copy protected! That's right, you can burn CDs as much as you want to and put them on as many MP3 players and iPods as your heart desires. Now, being that the site is Russian, one would suspect that these files are low-quality downloads to begin with, no matter what quality it is set at. Not true, the quality is quite good. The name of the site is exaggerating a little bit, they don't have every band out there but man, they have a good selection.
Now, unfortunately there is a possible catch. It is currently under investigation as to whether the site is legal or not. There doesn't seem to be a definite answer so far. Allofmp3.com is actually so popular that, believe it or not, are the 2nd most popular download site in the UK (1st place is iTunes)! The UK's BPI (British Phonographic Agency) has gotten permission to sue Allofmp3.com in a lawsuit claiming that the site isn't legal. The British government said that they won't sue any users from the site in the UK. The U.S. government has been having talks with Russia about this site and they claim that Allofmp3 is keeping Russia from getting into the World Trade Organization. That's pretty serious! As far as payment for the MP3s go, you pretty much need a credit card for the service (Mastercard and Visa ONLY). The site will show you the methods of sending payment to them. One problem though, Visa and Mastercard recently said that they won't allow people to pay Allofmp3 with their credit cards. That creates a big problem, but I used a credit card a few days ago and made a payment just fine. The site has also been blocked in Denmark by the internet service provider there. A couple weeks ago, they started allowing people to download songs off the site for free, with Allofmp3's newly created encoding, MP3x. The MP3x files play only in the site's downloadable proprietary player, Music for Masses. It works fine, but the MP3x files can only be played on a computer with this player and you have to login to Allofmp3.com to use the player. Hackers have created cracks for this player that can turn the MP3x files into regular MP3s, but Allofmp3 has been updating the player so it will not run with the software crack.
Once you have money in your account, you can immediately start searching and downloading! Just search for an album or a song and follow the simple instructions and pick a location on your computer to download to. If you've never heard of this site before, its probably because they don't advertise at all. I discovered this site by accident, actually. I had purchased an imported CD online and there was writing on the CD that said: "Do not copy! Virus Danger! The manufacturer is neither liable for computer crashes nor hard drive failures!!!" I was kind of freaked out by this and searched around online to try and figure out if there was actually danger of some whopper virus that would wipe out everything on my hard drive or just an empty threat designed to scare people away from CD copying. It was a fake after all and no part of my computer was ruined. One of the forums mentioned Allofmp3.com and I decided to find out more about it, and here I am! My dad really loves this site because he can get a lot of his weirder eclectic music from them.
Aside from shaky legalities, this site is an excellent way to get music. I highly doubt that the government will sue customers of the site, because the customer is paying for the files, not just stealing them for free like on a peer-to-peer program. They will much more likely go after operators of the site instead. Hopefully this site will stay online for a few more years before they get shut down, if they ever do.
Posted By aces_high @ 8:04 PM | Comments: 0 |
Facebook
Twitter
