Why Risk RIAA?? Awesome Legal Music Site
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Topic URL: http://www.neurosaudio.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3804
Printed on: 01/04/2007
Topic:
Topic author: degauss
Subject: Why Risk RIAA?? Awesome Legal Music Site I just discovered this site http://www.allofmp3.com/index2.shtml.
Replies:
Posted on: 06/09/2004 11:52:34 AM
Message:
They have many very cool features, including Online Encoding. What OE lets you do is encode the music you download in a format of your choice at the bitrate of your choice. They support lot's of formats, including Ogg-Vorbis. While it is a pay service, the pay model is very cool. You pay by the megabyte ($0.01USD), in advance. So, on the average a full CD costs about $0.60. And, unlike P2P, artists get royalties.
So, now there's no way you won't be able to afford to fill your Neuros 
What's that oshifer? I swear dat light wuz ernch.
Reply author: Yono
Replied on: 06/09/2004 3:14:40 PM
Message:
When clicking on the link, remember to delete the period at the end.
-- 'Artificial Intelligence is No Replacement for Natural Stupidity'
Reply author: xercist
Replied on: 06/09/2004 3:40:01 PM
Message:
I just recently found this site, too. It's pretty nice, overall. With their prices ($.01 / meg) and their location (Russia), I suspect that they don't actually pay artists for the music. Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken.
The OE mode is quite cool, and I can get my oggs encoded with q5 like I like them. They use vorbis 1.0.1, though I'd prefer gt3b2. Also, their metadata is a bit weak. It's almost always correct, but they only add artist, title, and album tags, so being a stickler for complete metadata, I have to go add date, genre, replaygain, tracknumber, and arranger/version if applicable. And any non-ascii characters are stripped or turned into ascii, so I have to go get the UTF-8 metadata and replace it.
Crazy Russians!
Reply author: noiz
Replied on: 06/09/2004 8:38:06 PM
Message:
also, i looked around on the site and they have some free albums you can download in mp3 format at 128 kb/s. some of the artists are sex pistols, bob dylan, john lennon, and the rolling stones. this site does look pretty cool. im probably going to get a gig of files for $10 and see if it is really that great.
-noiz
Reply author: degauss
Replied on: 06/10/2004 01:39:20 AM
Message:
I researched it and they are certified by the Russian Organization for Multimedia & Digital Systems (ROMS).
ROMS is a member of CISAC (www.cisac.org) - the International confederation of authors and composers societies. ROMS manages intellectual rights in the Russian Federation. All third party distributors licensed by ROMS are required to pay a portion of the revenue to the ROMS. ROMS in turn, is obligated to pay most of that money (aside from small portion it needs for operating expenses) to artists. Both Russian and foreign.
You can find out more here http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm#Is%20Allofmp3%20legal?
What's that oshifer? I swear dat light wuz ernch.
Reply author: 8thNote
Replied on: 06/10/2004 06:58:54 AM
Message:
YEAH! I've been using them for about a year now and love it! I think I've spent about $40 on the site and have nearly 100 CDs from it. They have a great soundtrack selection and update about twice a week.
Being a classical music fan, I enjoy their huge list of this genre and have enjoyed buying composers' entire symphonic works for just a couple dollars.
Yes, a lot of their older tracks were missing track numbers, but I haven't had problems with the newer downloads. A strange thing the site does is puts the album name in the artist field, the artist often with the track name, and I think the genre ocassionally ends up in the album field. Or something like that.
I was also going to recommend Museekster's review but that's already been done.
I use this site much more than ClubMP3Search or whatever it's called.
Daniel J. Lewis
Reply author: noiz
Replied on: 06/15/2004 4:10:48 PM
Message:
i have just finished downloading about a gig worth of music from this site and its pretty good. with the free downloads i got from them it was only going about 25 kb/s but when i was acually paying for q5 ogg files it would download 70-120 kb/s. they have a great selection but the only thing i dont like is that for genre they have put unknown for all of the songs i have downloaded. other than that this is a great service.
-noiz
Reply author: Chameleon
Replied on: 06/15/2004 7:08:13 PM
Message:
I think if they get enough requests/complaints from their paying customers that they would do something about the lacking metadata.
I plan to use the service soon and I'd like the metadata to be complete and accurate. I'll be sure to complain to them if it's not.
-- 'I switched to Vorbis and saved a bunch on my hard-disk space!'
Reply author: xercist
Replied on: 06/15/2004 8:39:43 PM
Message:
Alright, here are my problems with allofmp3's metadata:
- All 's are changed to `s
- All extended-ascii (not to mention unicode) is dropped
- Often punctuation is dropped, like a ? or ! at the end of a title
- All albums must have the same artist tag, so if it's a multi-artist compilation, the artist tag is set to the arranger name (or the album name if there's no arranger), and the title tag is set to "artist - title"
- When downloading directly, tracknumber and date tags are missing. When using their "explorer" application, they're both added twice (date=2000, year=2000, tracknumber=01, track=01)
- No genre tag/s
The metadata is better than you'll find in random files on various filesharing networks, but I still give it the same treatment: look up the album on multiple web sources and check every character and tag. I'm picky about my metadata. In fact, I don't mind the problems with allofmp3 because I accept that they could never satisfy me and I'd end up editing it all anyway.
Reply author: Zap!
Replied on: 06/16/2004 09:15:21 AM
Message:
Wow, thanks for this awesome link. I'm not big on buying albums online because I just like to have the actual physical CD around in case something happens.
---------
If you really want to set the metadata quickly and easily, get Foobar2000 music player. It has a feature in the Special version that allows you to masstag by album quickly and easily.
Follow these steps: Hilight the album you wish to tag. Right click somewhere in the hilighted area, go to 'freedb' and click on 'Get tags". From there, it will attempt to find the album listing from freedb. At the top of the masstagger window, there will be a dropdown box with all the listings of the album. Click on 'preview' to review what metadata will be set. Click on 'Tag files' and everything will be done!
Reply author: degauss
Replied on: 06/17/2004 3:50:47 PM
Message:
quote:
Originally posted by Zap!
Wow, thanks for this awesome link. I'm not big on buying albums online because I just like to have the actual physical CD around in case something happens.
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If you back up your download to a CD then you have a physical copy just in case something happens.
What's that oshifer? I swear dat light wuz ernch.
Reply author: Don
Replied on: 06/17/2004 6:26:42 PM
Message:
quote:
Originally posted by degauss
I researched it and they are certified by the Russian Organization for Multimedia & Digital Systems (ROMS).
ROMS is a member of CISAC (www.cisac.org) - the International confederation of authors and composers societies. ROMS manages intellectual rights in the Russian Federation. All third party distributors licensed by ROMS are required to pay a portion of the revenue to the ROMS. ROMS in turn, is obligated to pay most of that money (aside from small portion it needs for operating expenses) to artists. Both Russian and foreign.
You can find out more here http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm#Is%20Allofmp3%20legal?
This little disclaimer appears on the site:
You can legally buy/download mp3-songs from this site if it does not breaks the law the national legislation of the country in which you will be during that moment.
quote:
What's that oshifer? I swear dat light wuz ernch.
None of us was driving, we was all in the back seat.
One way street? But I was only going one way!
-Don
Reply author: Joseph
Replied on: 06/20/2004 4:47:38 PM
Message:
I agree this is an awesome site. I have download over $100 worth of albums from it. But to really take full advantage you MUST download the allofmp3 explorer program. It allows you to customize the naming and directory hiearchy convention of your files as well as download whole albums at a time. Also with the newest version and you can search and D/L the songs all from the program. It ain't as pretty as i-tunes, but it gets the job done.
Reply author: noiz
Replied on: 06/20/2004 4:51:26 PM
Message:
quote:
I agree this is an awesome site. I have download over $100 worth of albums from it. But to really take full advantage you MUST download the allofmp3 explorer program. It allows you to customize the naming and directory hiearchy convention of your files as well as download whole albums at a time. Also with the newest version and you can search and D/L the songs all from the program. It ain't as pretty as i-tunes, but it gets the job done.
the program is pretty nice. has some little bugs but nothing to big. love being able to dl whole albums for about a dollar or most of the time even less. plus i can encode them all ogg q5!
-noiz
Reply author: Lou Erickson
Replied on: 06/21/2004 9:22:57 PM
Message:
Is it really legal in this country? The notice posted above says for use inside Russia. The music cartels have notoriously different costs per-country.
Also, how do you prove you bought the file? Print a recipt? Give me a minute with the HTML... I've got all the recipits I want, woo hoo! How do I prove I bought the CD? I have it here. Someone bought it, probably me. (And if it's in the box in my garage, where all my CDs are now, no one is playing it, so I can be playing my digital copies.)
It sounds too good to be true... therefore it probably is.
(Not to say that it isn't tons better than just stealing them, or that the artists get any less at $1/disc than they do from the regular sales, but I can't tell if it actually is legal. Who could? Do we have a lawyer in the audience?)
Reply author: Chameleon
Replied on: 06/22/2004 12:16:53 AM
Message:
The RIAA makes their own rules, then lobby for laws to back them up.
I feel no remorse even if they aren't getting their cut. As long as the artists are compensated, which it appears this site is doing, I feel just in patronizing them.
In a global economy, price fixing cannot work. The RIAA will need to either evolve or be evicted from the global market place.
I believe the later will occur in due time either way.
-- 'I switched to Vorbis and saved a bunch on my hard-disk space!'
Reply author: 8thNote
Replied on: 06/22/2004 08:29:15 AM
Message:
quote:
It sounds too good to be true...
Does it? Yes, it's great, but "too good to be true" would be if the music was free and had every CD you would ever want. This service is not that.
A lot of people were deceived into thinking the iTunes music store was almost too good to be true. We now know that to be quite the opposite (especially considering albums are usually costing the same as CDs).
Daniel J. Lewis
Reply author: brewer13210
Replied on: 06/22/2004 10:01:40 AM
Message:
So, has anyone who has used these guys had any suspicious credit card charges appearing on your accounts? The whole concept of providing on-demand encoding is pretty cool, and although they don’t seem to have any classical or jazz, there are more that a few albums I’d like to pick up. I’m just not wild about giving my credit card number to a company based in Russia.
Todd
Reply author: 8thNote
Replied on: 06/22/2004 10:06:27 AM
Message:
quote:
So, has anyone who has used these guys had any suspicious credit card charges appearing on your accounts?
I made my first charge of $5 directly with my card and later discovered I was charged $5.16 or something small like that. But I also had a mysterious $1 "bonus credit" to my AllofMP3 account. Since the amount was so small, I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, especially since they probably already found the error and credited the $1 to fix it. That's almost two free CDs, so I didn't complain. :)
I now just use PayPal to add credit to my account. This provides an additional level of security because a PayPal charge gives AllofMP3 the money only, not my card information that they could mess up.
PayPal would of course let you transfer from your bank account as well.
So far, I've bought 3 gigs from this place and I love it!
Daniel J. Lewis
Reply author: Zap!
Replied on: 06/22/2004 12:31:37 PM
Message:
The biggest problem that I have found with this system is that not every song is the full length. Take Lisa Loeb's song "Dance With the Angels" for instance. The song should be a few minutes long but it is only 6 seconds when I downloaded it! Other than that, I love the service. j Allofmp3 Express is a beautiful program, in my opinion.
Reply author: 8thNote
Replied on: 06/22/2004 12:58:59 PM
Message:
Six seconds? Are you logged in? Are you purchasing the music?
I'm a classical/soundtrack fan and all the 3 gigs I've downloaded were full-length and without encoding errors.
Daniel J. Lewis
Reply author: Chameleon
Replied on: 06/22/2004 9:51:07 PM
Message:
Of the nearly 1 GB I have downloaded so far, I did get a song with an encoding error.
I reported it through the offered method and got this reply:
quote:
TechSupport: Bad album removed from site. We reimburse for the song. Accept our applogizes
I have yet to get a refund, but I'm not too worried about it.
The album is already removed from the site, but the song is on another album, so I could get it if I want... I probably will.
-- 'I switched to Vorbis and saved a bunch on my hard-disk space!'
Reply author: Derek
Replied on: 07/02/2004 3:07:30 PM
Message:
Just tried this site...14 cents for a 320 kbps song.... awesome... eat your heart out itunes and walmart.com who needs 88 cents a song with no quality choices...
great find guys.
Reply author: alecm
Replied on: 07/02/2004 3:47:55 PM
Message:
quote:
Originally posted by pedersdd(at)alfred
Just tried this site...14 cents for a 320 kbps song.... awesome... eat your heart out itunes and walmart.com who needs 88 cents a song with no quality choices...
great find guys.
Unfortunately, it's probably not actually legal (at least not right now because the entity that they claim allows them to distribute music has revoked their license):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/05/russian_mp3_site/
Either way the artists never get paid (though the song publishers may get a few cents from each download due to compulsory licensing), and there's some likelihood that that your money ends up with the Russian mafia. From an ethical standpoint you are probably better off using P2P as it's probably better to get the tracks for free illegally than to pay someone for illegally delivering tracks to you (especially if that money is potentially used to fund criminal activity). Even better is to give a real middle finger to the RIAA and stop supporting their inferior product, buy music from independent labels and use a service like emusic.com (my neuros' best friend).
Reply author: brewer13210
Replied on: 07/02/2004 5:15:19 PM
Message:
quote:
Unfortunately, it's probably not actually legal (at least not right now because the entity that they claim allows them to distribute music has revoked their license):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/05/russian_mp3_site/
Either way the artists never get paid (though the song publishers may get a few cents from each download due to compulsory licensing), and there's some likelihood that that your money ends up with the Russian mafia. From an ethical standpoint you are probably better off using P2P as it's probably better to get the tracks for free illegally than to pay someone for illegally delivering tracks to you (especially if that money is potentially used to fund criminal activity). Even better is to give a real middle finger to the RIAA and stop supporting their inferior product, buy music from independent labels and use a service like emusic.com (my neuros' best friend).
From reading the article, there is no doubt that it's a legal morass, however I didn't see anything in the article to suggest that there is any connection to the Russian mafia or any related criminal activity.
As for risk, I think the risk of getting sued by the RIAA for sharing music via P2P is more than deterent enough from using such a service, of which there is nothing legal about.
I've checked out eMusic before; their selection is pretty poor and they only offer mp3s.
Even if the American based music download sites can't legally provide the same breadth of music as allofmp3s.com, why can't they at least provide features like on the fly encoding or ogg vorbis support?
Reply author: alecm
Replied on: 07/02/2004 8:47:26 PM
Message:
quote:
Originally posted by brewer13210
From reading the article, there is no doubt that it's a legal morass, however I didn't see anything in the article to suggest that there is any connection to the Russian mafia or any related criminal activity.
According to this (admittedly out of date) BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/03/98/russian_mafia/70095.stm, 40% of private and 60% of state-owned companies in Russia are controlled by the mafia (and perhaps 80% of Russian banks). That combined with the very sketchy, somewhat exploitative, and possibly criminal nature of the business itself would indicate a reasonably large probability that allofmp3.com is in fact mafia involved.
Even if you want to take the see no evil position and assume that the business has no other criminal dealings, using the service still presents an ethical dilemma. You are essentially paying someone to commit a criminal act for you, in order to shield yourself from liability. Unless you believe that all music should be freely available (therefore that musicians need to find some other means of generating income), and that the law you are violating (copyright generally) is an unjust one, the use of the service is ethically at least as bad using P2P. Paying money to intermediaries, thereby creating a profitable market for selling a particular criminal service makes it even less ethically tenable than P2P (never mind that a real possibility exists that your money is going to fund less ambiguous criminality of the sort that you certainly would not knowingly support).
quote:
As for risk, I think the risk of getting sued by the RIAA for sharing music via P2P is more than deterrent enough from using such a service, of which there is nothing legal about.
Of course it puts you at less risk from RIAA lawsuits, but that in no way make it legal or ethical. My comment had nothing to do with risk, if that is your only concern than have at it, because you probably won't get caught! But you probably won't get caught using P2P either (especially if you stay off the big crappy networks), and that's at least as ethical, free, and guarantees that you don't accidentally support terrorism/forced prostitution/child pornography or whatever other vice the Russian Mafia may put its dollars into. Of course you could support independent music and do away with all the ethical and legal problems.
quote:
I've checked out eMusic before; their selection is pretty poor and they only offer mp3s.
Their selection is actually quite massive, however it is very likely that they have little you've ever heard of. I personally think of that as its greatest selling point: a truly enormous selection of interesting and unfamiliar music which I can purchase at reasonable prices knowing that the artists and labels are compensated, without any involvement from the RIAA and its members. If your only interest is in corporate music then you have to deal with the monopolistic pricing and strongarm legal tactics. Fortunately, IMHO, the vast majority of good music produced here and abroad is not shackled by the RIAA.
Emusic does only offer MP3s, but they are very high quality mp3s (LAME APS 192 kbs VBR mp3s to be precise). I would certainly prefer if they offered Ogg Vorbis, but it doesn't really make much sense from a business point of view to do so (especially since the quality of MP3 they offer is more than adequate for the vast majority of their potential audience, and a very very small percentage of potential users cares specifically about file format as long as they can play it/burn it/put it on their neuros, etc.) MP3 is by far the most ubiquitous and well supported format so it makes sense to offer it exclusively, and the big plus is it's DRM free which is pretty hard to come by these days. The only legal site that I know of that does multiple formats is audiolunchbox.com, but they charge four times the highest emusic price for a small sub-section of the same music catalog (though they have a couple of non-emusic labels thrown in). I love Ogg Vorbis, but I'm not paying four times the price to get it, and I doubt anyone who is aware of the significant overlap of their catalogs is either.
quote:
Even if the American based music download sites can't legally provide the same breadth of music as allofmp3s.com, why can't they at least provide features like on the fly encoding or ogg vorbis support?
On the fly encoding is likely a pretty expensive proposition, though not so hard for a business like allofmp3.com which doesn't need to pay any royalties. The same goes for offering multiple formats (audiolunchbox makes users pay 4 times the emusic cost for that privilege). An online music seller makes money off of selling music, neither of those features are likely to broaden their audience or increase sales, but they do cost money.
In terms of breadth, allofmp3.com has a very poor selection of the music that I like (which is fortunately well represented on emusic, of course much of it I would have never even learned about had I not joined emusic), but that is because allofmp3.com is pretty much limited in the same way as the iTMS or Rhapsody. Are you saying that you don't use those legal services because they don't have the 'breadth' of music you require? My guess is that they have most everything you'd want, but you don't like their prices, especially considering that they offer a DRM crippled inferior product (i.e. if songs were a quarter and didn't have DRM, you'd probably be using those sites regularly). Those things aren't going to change if you keep supporting their product (even if you don't pay for it, you are supporting it by furthering its ubiquity, just like using OpenOffice hurts MS a lot more than pirating MS Office).
Chances are emusic's catalog is too 'limited' for you because you don't accept anything other than Major Label RIAA product as 'breadth'. That's true of most consumers, and the refusal of most consumers to even bother listening to anything that ClearChannel hasn't deigned to put on the radio is exactly why the RIAA can force $1 a song pricing and DRM crippled music on everyone. I'm pretty sure that emusic has a wider variety of available styles/genres than any of the the mainstream online music providers, and though it lacks some depth in a couple of important genres (notably Hip-Hop and current R&B; (though I'm not sure modern indie R&B; really exists)) most of the styles have incomparable depth and there are many great albums to be found in all of them. All you need is some willingness to try something new, and to take a few recommendations from the messageboards/lists and you'll be well on your way to divesting yourself of all the overproduced monopolistic RIAA garbage and the absurd prices and legal mess that goes with it.
Now it's time to get off my high horse, knowing full well that I probably haven't convinced anyone of anything. Why do I waste my time like this?
Reply author: Derek
Replied on: 07/08/2004 12:33:01 PM
Message:
When i first started using allofmp3.com i thought it was legal and then i looked into it a little more and it is very fishy. although it is one of the only places you can download non-DRM music. if i pay for the song i want to be able to use it. I no longer use this service but just for the record i found it very appealing. although it was probobly not legal.
on the issue of ethical...
this site is more of an outlet for non-ethical people. they can be shielded from prosecution by playing stupid and can pay a very small amount for garenteed good quality music. you may be able to get it for free somewhere else but will it be good quality? Kazaa is slowly being destroyed the same way... too much trash not enough goods. When you can steal goods from Russia for really cheap and not worry about being caught.... since half the country is supposed mafia i have heard, it is no wonder that it is being used by so many. i am neither agreeing or disagreeing with the use of this service that is your choice to make. but it seems to be the only real outlet for people seeking music without DRM and with multiple quality choices.
just thought i would contribute a few words,
Derek
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