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Umm, the link seem to be bad -- try this: Allofmp3.com (then click 'English' in the top left corner ;-) )

Allofmp3 suppots on-the-fly encoding to let you have 192 kbps Ogg's or whatever. Even FLAC or raw CD Audio is available, but only for some songs.

I have no idea how legal the site is where I live, but it's definitely legal in Russia. :-P

allofmp3.com someone ?

Does Media Center have a service where I can buy content?

Good point, Apple blurred the difference between packaged software and rented software (music) quite well with iTunes.

Media Center plays AACs, but probably not Apple's DRMd AACs unless you use VideoLAN or Hymn to open them up. If I want to play licensed music I suppose I'd use AllOfMp3.com or similar. Let's hear it for global free trade!

I've just joined allofmp3. You basically pay $0.01 per MB you download. (Aside: it's great! Pretty good range of stuff, great site, and you can choose the audio format and bitrate you want.)

I also buy the odd ebook &c from Fictionwise. Prices for short stories are only a few cents.

In both these cases, it's simply not feasible to pay for each purchase by VISA or whatever, so each one maintains an account for me; I can fill the balance on this account in large enough chunks via VISA or whatever, and can then use it to pay for music or books as necessary.

This is a workable solution; however, it's hassle for the web site keeping track of everyone's accounts &c, and it's hassle for me remembering that they hold a certain (small) amount of my money. It'd be much better all round if I could pay small amounts straight from my CC or whatever.

.... from the experts! (No DRM included!)

Random Techie will surely appreciate the fact that both iTunes [can't get link] and allofmp3 carry it. I'm positive he also knows that, in the case of the latter, it's available in virtually any format known to man, so that he can listen to it in his 10^-3 marketshare OS.

yup

-lk

English Link

Have you looked at AllOfMP3? Cheaper than iTMS, and you can get the stuff in Ogg already. (And no DRM).

The SuperDrive on my PowerBook couldn't handle the copy protection on a CD I bought a while back, so I simply stopped buying CD's because I use my computer as my stereo, and some stores don't take returns. I have an iPod too. If it won't go on my iPod, I don't want it. I didn't have a problem with buying CD's before. I used to buy tons of them. I'd even buy a whole album just for one song, rather than just getting a single. I'm the kind of customer they are alienating. I've decided to just boycott buying music because of this. There's always radio anyway, internet or free-to-air.

What I'd like to see are stores that specifically sell CD's without this kind of crap. These "copy protection" labels are usually hidden very obscurely in the fine print. I'd like to see CD's with huge "NO COPY PROTECTION" labels on them that you could see from across the music store. And I'd like online MP3 download music services for independent music getting together. I can't access the iTunes Music Store. It is taking too slow to get to different countries, and they sell music from the record companies I want to boycott anyway.

Here are a list of the MP3 sites I've come up with. If other people know of other sites, please post them. And if I'm mistaken about any on this list, please say so.

• Magnatune
• MP3.com.au
• ALLOFMP3
• IUMA

The sad thing is that not only the dull Britney Spears CD's are copy-protected, but also stuff like Radiohead and Placebo.

Solutions: Radiohead and Placebo.

Oh, and Britney Spears.

It's not free, like ripping a CD you already own, but it's danged cheap. For example, Placebo's album "Sleeping With Ghosts", will cost you about $0.44 USD in 128kbps MP3 files. $0.65 USD for 192kbps. Those prices are for the whole album, not just one song. Or you can get it in WMA, OGG Vorbis, MPEG-4. For some stuff (not this album) you can also get a FLAC-compressed copy for around $3 USD or the raw CD audio files for around $6 USD. Personally, I buy 256 kbps OGG Vorbis files, confident that I'll never own stereo equipment on which I could hear the difference between those and CDs.

Oh, and it's legal, at least until the RIAA finds a way to change Russian law. Whether or not it's ethical, you'll have to decide for yourself. Personally, I figure I'll buy my music in Russia and send a couple of bucks to the band directly. They'll make more, I'll spend less, and the label will get practically nothing.

Finally, if you're concerned about giving your credit card number to a company in Russia, they also accept Paypal. In practice, I know lots of people who've used the service and none who have been ripped off. In my own experience, I've had only one problem, where a beta WiFi network driver on my end introduced occasional corruptions into a couple of albums I downloaded (turns out the author assumed that the WiFi link's CRCs were adequate and so set an option that told the Linux IP stack not to bother checking the TCP and IP CRCs). When I posted a support request to allofmp3.com, I got a helpful response in minutes -- in perfect English -- telling me to download them again and send another message asking them to credit the second download back to my account. I did and they gave me the credit, plus an extra $0.75 for my trouble -- which on their site amounts to a free album.

The sad thing is that not only the dull Britney Spears CD's are copy-protected, but also stuff like Radiohead and Placebo.

Solutions: Radiohead and Placebo.

Oh, and Britney Spears.

It's not free, like ripping a CD you already own, but it's danged cheap. For example, Placebo's album "Sleeping With Ghosts", will cost you about $0.44 USD in 128kbps MP3 files. $0.65 USD for 192kbps. Those prices are for the whole album, not just one song. Or you can get it in WMA, OGG Vorbis, MPEG-4. For some stuff (not this album) you can also get a FLAC-compressed copy for around $3 USD or the raw CD audio files for around $6 USD. Personally, I buy 256 kbps OGG Vorbis files, confident that I'll never own stereo equipment on which I could hear the difference between those and CDs.

Oh, and it's legal, at least until the RIAA finds a way to change Russian law. Whether or not it's ethical, you'll have to decide for yourself. Personally, I figure I'll buy my music in Russia and send a couple of bucks to the band directly. They'll make more, I'll spend less, and the label will get practically nothing.

Finally, if you're concerned about giving your credit card number to a company in Russia, they also accept Paypal. In practice, I know lots of people who've used the service and none who have been ripped off. In my own experience, I've had only one problem, where a beta WiFi network driver on my end introduced occasional corruptions into a couple of albums I downloaded (turns out the author assumed that the WiFi link's CRCs were adequate and so set an option that told the Linux IP stack not to bother checking the TCP and IP CRCs). When I posted a support request to allofmp3.com, I got a helpful response in minutes -- in perfect English -- telling me to download them again and send another message asking them to credit the second download back to my account. I did and they gave me the credit, plus an extra $0.75 for my trouble -- which on their site amounts to a free album.

The sad thing is that not only the dull Britney Spears CD's are copy-protected, but also stuff like Radiohead and Placebo.

Solutions: Radiohead and Placebo.

Oh, and Britney Spears.

It's not free, like ripping a CD you already own, but it's danged cheap. For example, Placebo's album "Sleeping With Ghosts", will cost you about $0.44 USD in 128kbps MP3 files. $0.65 USD for 192kbps. Those prices are for the whole album, not just one song. Or you can get it in WMA, OGG Vorbis, MPEG-4. For some stuff (not this album) you can also get a FLAC-compressed copy for around $3 USD or the raw CD audio files for around $6 USD. Personally, I buy 256 kbps OGG Vorbis files, confident that I'll never own stereo equipment on which I could hear the difference between those and CDs.

Oh, and it's legal, at least until the RIAA finds a way to change Russian law. Whether or not it's ethical, you'll have to decide for yourself. Personally, I figure I'll buy my music in Russia and send a couple of bucks to the band directly. They'll make more, I'll spend less, and the label will get practically nothing.

Finally, if you're concerned about giving your credit card number to a company in Russia, they also accept Paypal. In practice, I know lots of people who've used the service and none who have been ripped off. In my own experience, I've had only one problem, where a beta WiFi network driver on my end introduced occasional corruptions into a couple of albums I downloaded (turns out the author assumed that the WiFi link's CRCs were adequate and so set an option that told the Linux IP stack not to bother checking the TCP and IP CRCs). When I posted a support request to allofmp3.com, I got a helpful response in minutes -- in perfect English -- telling me to download them again and send another message asking them to credit the second download back to my account. I did and they gave me the credit, plus an extra $0.75 for my trouble -- which on their site amounts to a free album.

On a whim I bought the album on itunes (i'm a big GN'R fan and kinda like STP)...

I wonder if russian ripping service allofmp3 has this album... dammit not yet contraband search returns

"Men at Work - Contraband - The Best Of Men At Work " ... who can it be now, knocking on my door.. it's RIAA don't make a sound....

I liked the single on VR contraband (slither) but the rest of the album sounds a little half arse... there's one decent ballad on there that's kinda like a country'ed up "sweet child o mine" *Shrug*

but i digress...

e.

You might think that, but do you know of a hack for modern windows XP? I know old XP was cracked pretty easily, with keygens and changekey tricks out within a month of it's release. But I think you'll have to look VERY hard indeed to find a crack for XP that you buy in the store today.

In the age old battle between armor and warhead, one advances in capability and is capable of defeating the other, and then the other catches up. This continues until warhead advances to the point of achieving it's goals by making the warhead irrelevant.

When it's finally time, some EE wil release to the public a way to plug your speaker wires into your PC, and digitally record the sound that was going to your speakers. This method is undefeatable by definition, because the computer will certainly be able to decipher anything the speaker can. And I don't think even the RIAA will be able to force manufacturers to include DRM junk in speakers.

The only reason this hasn't happened yet is that is slows ripping time down to the point htat it equals playing time. and that IS the price that will have to be paid. But fortunately only once, and I don't mind if it's someone who profits from it a little.

I'm sure some RIAA exec is wondering why I would pay for that music, and not pay for a "legal" (your laws there Mr. Man, not mine) version of it. I'll never be able to explain it so that you can understand it Mr. Man. All I can tell you is that there is a price point at which you can get ME, the same guy who once advocated that it was people's civic duty to rip and distribute music, to pay for music. Your job is to find that price point, AND accept the fact that people will always be able to distribute. You have to find a way to make your content actually WORTH what you're charging for it to everyone, and then you'll get sales at the point that it seems a good value. Right now that music IS worth $15.00 a CD to some people, in fact the evidence proves that it is worth $15.00 to MANY people. Are you maximizing your profits that way? I don't know, maybe so. But once released into the public, the music is no longer in your comtrol, and you will never again be able ot change that. What you can control is what you will distribute, and how you will distribute as being the the person with the first and best copy.

Good luck, and you can count on me to make sure that you will always have to make sure you are providing the best value for the consumer by always being aware of my alternatives.

Well, when you do start buying online, I'd go with allofmp3.com Songs are a few cents apiece-- most albums cost less than the $0.99 apple charges for a single song. *And* they have the entire Beatles catalog available. It's 100% legal. It's no worse than buying a CD from Amazon.co.uk.

How can this possibly be? It's due to the wonders of international copyright law.

I spend $4 to $6 a month there.. which ends up being 7-8 albums a month, DRM-free mp3's.

That's a lot better than Apple's pricing scheme, where you'd get 4-6 SONGS per month, with all kinds of fucked up DRM which limits what you can do with what you've LEGALLY PURCHASED.

Try http://www.allofmp3.com, a Russian site charging $0.01 per megabyte downloaded, with various encoding options (an album is about 100 megs, so that's $1.00!!) Best site ever. And, apparently, legal (search for reviews on it.)

~Berj

i have more than enough data to put on a 60GB ipod along with at least 30GB of music. lots of people live in small houses/apartments (hello New Yorkers and Tokyoites!) that being able to pack 5 boxes of CDs and ship it off to moms house in the burbs is a huge win. all the while having access to listen to all of it on demand without hunting for a particular disk.
of course, another reason one might have huge amounts of tunez is this.

until they offer DRM free options I will NEVER buy.

You can buy files in MP3, Ogg Vorbis, or select other formats from this site run from Russia. The downloads are licensed through a music rights organization and contain no digital restrictions management encoding.

No, I don't work for
allofmp3.com - where music downloads YOU!

... and i'll pimp it again.

allofmp3.com

Legal? Maybe, but most likely not. I don't care; i'll still buy the actual CD if it's a CD worth having. but here you get the music in the format you want, at the compression you want, and DRM free. No browser issues, either (as far as i can tell, i've only tried IE6 and FireFox). None of the risks of downloading what may or may not be what you want off the file-sharing services. And all for a penny a MB.

Forget Napster, iTunes, et al.

The Russian equivalent to iTunes - allofmp3.com - is the way forward for all your music needs!!

You pay 1 cent a megabyte so $10 gets you a gigabyte of mp3 download - and you can pay using Paypal in case you're worried about your Credit Card getting stolen by a shady Russkie...

Cheap, cheerful and legal (at least in the eyes of Russian law) and they have a great selection (better than iTunes as it includes European chart music also).

Screw the RIAA, download songs legally for pennies from Allofmp3.com. Download 'em in whatever format you like, as well, from WMA, MP3 (Lame), MPC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Monkey's Ape, etc. Cheap. Legal (or at least currently safe from any worry of legal prosecution). No DRM. And they even have artists you'll find nowhere else online (legally), like The Beatles.

the riaa tends to be trying to kill a swarm by swatting at individual bees. for every one they swat, a new one is bred. they'll have to sue for a long time for them to get their desired results, and by that time people will have moved on to better distribution channels. ...one of which is right here:

www.allofmp3.com completely thwarts the RIAA while still paying the artists a modest sum (probably comparable to what the RIAA pays them).

$0.01 / megabyte download (pennies per song, less than $0.50 per album), perfectly legal (all RIAA propoganda and misinformation aside), and none of the money goes to fund these lawsuits. Even better, a portion goes to the actual artists directly -- a requirement of Russian copyright law.

Legal, so cheap it is almost free, and it absolutely thwarts the RIAA's ability to even think about suing anyone.

Go here to purchase music and give the difference to Oxfam.

Not only will you be getting clean MP3s, you'll be able to help more people with the money you save.

10p each track to charity is all well and good if the songs were say 20-30p each, but 75p to 1 quid? I don't think so. I may as well just go into Oxfam and buy a couple of quids worth of old cloths or whatnot, then all the money goes to Oxfam.

Until a digital music service offers me MP3s at a reasonable price all my money is going to the Russians

When the Incredibles teaser came out, I got eerie over the music in it. Why? Because I felt like they ripped off the music from somewhere else... Guess what? It's from the James Bond Tomorrow Never Dies Soundtrack. The "cool" song that play in this trailer is Backseat Driver (David Arnold featuring the Propellerheads) from Tomorrow Never Dies. I have no idea why they're recycling soundtracks. Maybe that's a starting trend...

For example, with a single search you can find that 'Abbey Road' by the Beatles is not available for legal download at iTunes, Napster, or anywhere else.

You can find it for download here, in your choice of format and bit rate (up to 384kbps), DRM-free, for $0.01 per MB (and, BTW, when they say MB, they mean 2^20 bytes).

As I understand it, it is a legal download, though it probably makes the record labels angry.

(How is it legal? IANAL, but my understanding is that it works like this: Under Russian law, there is apparently no difference between broadcasting over radio and "broadcasting" over the Internet. allofmp3.com pays royalties just as though they were a radio station and thereby obtains the right to "broadcast" over the net. I'm sure the RIAA is trying to figure out how to close this loophole in Russian law, but they haven't been able to do it yet. Oh, and AFAIK there is no law against importing music files from Russia, although it may be the case that you're supposed to pay some sort of import duties.)

For example, with a single search you can find that 'Abbey Road' by the Beatles is not available for legal download at iTunes, Napster, or anywhere else.

You can find it for download here, in your choice of format and bit rate (up to 384kbps), DRM-free, for $0.01 per MB (and, BTW, when they say MB, they mean 2^20 bytes).

As I understand it, it is a legal download, though it probably makes the record labels angry.

(How is it legal? IANAL, but my understanding is that it works like this: Under Russian law, there is apparently no difference between broadcasting over radio and "broadcasting" over the Internet. allofmp3.com pays royalties just as though they were a radio station and thereby obtains the right to "broadcast" over the net. I'm sure the RIAA is trying to figure out how to close this loophole in Russian law, but they haven't been able to do it yet. Oh, and AFAIK there is no law against importing music files from Russia, although it may be the case that you're supposed to pay some sort of import duties.)

Napster, Itunes, Walmart, mp3.com - eat your hearts out.

You can buy Abbey Road online here..

"show me a site where I can legally download major-label music WITHOUT DRM"

How about this: AllOfMP3

Of course, I think this just proves the point that PlayFair/Hymn is primarily for those who want to purchase music from ITMS and use it on non-iTunes players. Buying from AllOfMP3 would be far less expensive.

There are some songs on allofmp3.com that aren't available on iTunes, so it's very tempting... but...

Is there any reason I should think that Museekster.com has any credibility? IP law is a convoluted mess right now, and this guy doesn't exactly sound like a lawyer. I also couldn't help but notice the disclaimer on the site:

"...The author reserves the right not to be responsible for the topicality, correctness, completeness or quality of the information provided. Liability claims regarding damage caused by the use of any information provided, including any kind of information which is incomplete or incorrect,will therefore be rejected..."

Pretty standard fare given our lawsuit-crazed society, I suppose, but still...

That allofmp3.com offers Beatles and Metallica albums seems troublesome, too, and I'm not sure that the explanation put forth by Museekster.com holds water:

"...The Beatles and Metallica have not authorized their music to be sold online for anyone. Yet Allofmp3 offers about any Beatles and Metallica album ever released.

There are two reasons:

• Foreign works released before 1973 are not protected in Russia. Russia signed the Berne Convention without the retrospective protection.
• The second reason is that under Russian law a collecting society like ROMS automatically has the right to license ANY intellectual property to Russian distributors, even if the author is not subject to Russian law.

This explains why Allofmp3 can offer music that is not licensed for downloading in the US and Europe, like music by The Beatles or Metallica..."

Uh... okaaay...

I'd like to believe this is all nice and legal, but the cynic in me can't make the leap. (Damn!)

All I can say is that I've purchased from iTunes since it first came out partially because the price-point was RIGHT. They did what was needed to get me as a customer. Since then, I've purchased over 300 songs -- that's $300 in the past year, which is more than I've EVER, I repeat, EVER spent on CD's in any year in my entire 34 year-old life.

If they raise the price, even only by 25-50 cents per song, not only will I stop buying music from iTunes, I'm not going to go out and buy any music CD's either, regardless of whether it's cheaper or not. They need to get it through their thick heads that we aren't going to buy our music on physical media any more, we want to own that digital music, and we want it at a reasonable price-point.

If they raise the price of downloaded music on iTunes, they'll send a bunch of customers back to Kazaa trading -- but if that happens, maybe it's time for you guys reading this to go to another alternative, AllOfMP3.com. Yes, it's legal, and, yes, they are a Russian website, but they have an English version. I heard about it from a British coworker, and it looks good -- features:

-- Music or Music Video (!) downloads
-- Music codecs offered include MP3, WMA, OGG, MPC & MP4-AAC! The encoding is also on-the-fly and offered encoded from 128 kbps to 384kbps.
-- American and European music, including all the music I've purchased on iTunes.
-- $0.01/megabyte for music files, $0.02/megabyte for AllofMP3.com-exclusive files (this changed recently, but I think it's correct).
-- It's LEGALLY LICENSED and legal to buy from them.

You missed , the Russian Music site that is offering legal digital music by the MB. If you don't trust russian companies with your credit card details, you can pay through paypal.

Why yes I am!

It's a pretty cheap service, but some doubts were brought up whether Americans could legally use the service.

It charges 1 cent per MB of downloading, and it works out to about 5-8 cents per song. You can choose your encoding (mp3, ogg etc.) and bitrate. Allofmp3.com

Not exactly, but apparntly you can make it with under a buck per album

Allofmp3.com - no DRM, choose your preferred format (encoding on the fly into WMA, MP3, Ogg, MP4, FLAC, etc), and pay pennies per megabyte. Legal... er.... (insert lame joke about "in Soviet Russia").

Program Wanted Looks slightly weird, & I don't know how this system works legally..

Alos, do they provide me with a receipt that I can prove that I bought my songs with? Why should I pay $5/500MB if I can still get fscked for having mp3 on my HDD without the CD?

I'm very happy with the sound quality of allofmp3, for the most part. It's definitely better than iTunes or any competitor. However, they most definitely misrepresent the quality.

All of their CDs are stored in their database as a 384 kb/s LAME encoded mp3, not in a lossless form. So, you're pretty much wasting your time if you use extremely high quality ogg or mpc encoding since the quality can never be higher than the original mp3, and whatever you use will have been reencoded at least once, with whatever associated quality losses that entails.

Allofmp3 is trying to resolve this quality issue, fortunately. Right now, they have about fifty of their most downloaded CDs (White Stripe's Elephant, Outkast's epic album, REM's greatest hits, etc.) available online [allofmp3.com] to be encoded losslessly. You have to check the box that says "use original cd data" and you also have the option of getting SHN, FLAC, or APE encoded music. However, you have to pay twice as much for that priveledge, at which point it would almost be cheaper to buy the cd new. See this interview [museekster.com] with someone working for allofmp3.

The interview also reiterates some of the legality issues, but of course, it's straight from the mouth of allofmp3 which certainly isn't a non-biased source.

Reasons to use FLAC:

• It's free and open; I'm not going to find my files are suddenly unplayable because developers are unable to support it properly. I think it's even part of fb2k's std_input array, meaning it's supported in a player who's installer is less than 800k (the bloated "special" one which will play just about anything and do just about anything to the resulting sound is a shade over 2MB).
• It's lossless; I can transcode to any lossy format I like for playback on a portable.. maybe I get a player that only does MP3, maybe I find one which can play back MusePack; either way I can choose to create a lossy file which is tuned to my portable usage (100kbps Vorbis might be a good one for portable use, but man that'll suck on my desktop). Additionally if FLAC were ever to become unusable (maybe someone finds a patent against it or so.. whatever), I can convert to any other lossless format and get the same benefits without worrying about losing anything. I like a futureproof music collection.
• It's lossless; even at high bitrates, lossy formats aren't perfect, especially MP3. I don't want to worry about compression artifacts or encoder bugs or what quality setting to use; lossless is an easy choice, with no quality tradeoffs. With 600GB+ of disk space I couldn't really care less about the 4x increase in size.
• It's robust; I've lost track of the number of MP3's I've seen with serious sync errors (bit errors, basically). Despite having more FLAC files, I'm yet to come across a corrupt one, even through the less official channels (in fact, I've yet to be able to buy a set of FLAC files complete with .PAR2's, .MD5's and .LOG files). Pirate FLAC files are usually of at least identical quality to a CD you've ripped yourself.. pirate MP3's are usually encoded using stupid settings using a badly configured burst ripper. No thanks.
• It's well supported; it even has hardware support, which bodes well for the next few generations of portable audio players (if you had a 100G+ player wouldn't you like to be able to play lossless files instead of faffing about with lossy stuff?)
• It's fast. I can encode and decode FLAC faster than most lossy formats, including low bitrate Vorbis files. Yes, this is a big deal when I'm waiting for an album to ReplayGain or transcoding to other formats; going from 1% CPU to 0.5% CPU during normal playback is the difference between decoding at 100x and decoding at 200x.
• It's well specified. I'll be impressed if you can point me at a document describing MP3, and even then you're not going to find any metadata standards with an official specification; ID3v[12] and co are unofficial addons, and they suck (ever seen the ID3v2 spec? A ID3v2 reader/writer can be easily twice the size of a complete decoder and metadata reader/writer for most sane formats).

0 - Number of more successful on-line music services

Sorry, but I think allofmp3.com is probably every bit as much successful. In fact, I think that given that they sell the music cheaply and will rip it to any lossy or lossless format you want, iTunes days are numbered. It is just a matter of time before DRM'd $0.99 tunes are dead in the water. Oh, and under the Berne convention, this is legal in your country if they are a signatory. Don't pay attention to FUD to the contrary.

• Speed. Though I'm sure many can provide their own anecdotal evidence on how iTunes works fine on their machines, that doesn't invalidate the many, MANY claims of iTunes being a bloated, resource hog (at least on Windows.). Foobar and Winamp with a little tweaking open almost instantaenously, while iTunes lags behind on starting up. Even when minimized, iTunes is taking up far more CPU than a media player should (even more than WMP!).
• MPC/FLAC/SHN/APE/etc. support. If applications like Foobar, Winamp, and QCD can pull it off, why can't iTunes, with it's beefy 19.5 MB download, play simple file formats like these that've been around for years? Wouldn't it work in their favor to allow their users more choice, to let their users listen to their music in whatever format they've chosen to encode them in?
• Queueing. Once again, something included with XMMS, Winamp, and even MMJB. If your listening to a huge random playlist of songs in Winamp, but want to hear a particular song after the one your listening to, just select the song in the playlist and hit 'Q'. Winamp will finish the currently playing song, then play the song you selected, then return to randomly shuffling the tracks automatically. You can do this with multiple tracks, picking an order you want to hear those songs, and then shuffling the rest. Or you can hit 'J' to search the list of the songs in the playlist, and select the song(s) you want to enqueue.
• Downloading Songs Off iPod Through The Media Player. Instead of assuming your user is doing something criminal and (flimsily) preventing them from easy access to the songs on their iPod, why not give them the freedom to move songs back and forth onto their hard drives. ml_ipod, a plug-in that lets you manage your iPod through Winamp's media library, not only allows you to transfer songs from your iPod, but lets you even "reverse-sync" them.
• Support for competing MP3 portables. I think I read somewhere that iTunes may support another mp3 player besides the iPod, but that really isn't enough. Once again, I think it'd be beneficial the popularity of the program if they supported other players. Have they released an SDK for their community to toy with? The Foobar and Nullsoft teams did this, and they got great results.
• Gapless playback on iPod. This is a big deal to audiophiles, and I'm really surprised by the iPod's lack of support on this. The Rio Karma does this. Why not iPod?

Though I'll admit that the join-tracks feature was much-welcomed, what else did iTunes users get? Instead of downloading songs with propietary DRM, now we can encode our songs with a new proprietary DRM--songs that won't play on anything else? I think I'll stick with FLAC. The ability to publish my important music playlists for the whole world to see? I think I'll stick with Audioscrobbler. A free song from another bland RIAA-sponsored band? Epitonic has always provided a good sampling of independent artists and their music for you to try out. A wishlist to download those Top 40 songs later? Well, why don't I just download the songs now off allofmp3 now with their ridiculously low prices, in whatever format I want, without DRM? Import unprotected WMA files? Winamp

Direct link to signup page

Also, I didn't notice it sending anything over a secure https connection when I checked the box "Transfer personal data via secure connection" but I wasn't really paying that much attention. Anyone know if it did or didn't?

The website is in English.

click me

As the consumer (rather, a potential consumer) I should be able to determine the format I want. I choose 192k mp3s.

AllOfMp3.com lets you choose formats (Ogg, MP3, AAC, and so on) and bitrate/quality settings as part of your download process.

If questionably legal sites like this can offer such services, I can't see why it is so difficult for the "offficial" distributors.

As the consumer (rather, a potential consumer) I should be able to determine the format I want. I choose 192k mp3s.

AllOfMp3.com lets you choose formats (Ogg, MP3, AAC, and so on) and bitrate/quality settings as part of your download process.

If questionably legal sites like this can offer such services, I can't see why it is so difficult for the "offficial" distributors.

I like allofmp3. Whatever format and bit rate you want (up to and including 44.1Khz WAV, i.e. the raw CD rip), no DRM, all at 1 penny per MB.

How can anyone compete with that?

There are at least two online music stores for Australians to use. http://bigpondmusic.com/home.asp and http://www.destramusic.com/.

Sure, they are both Windows only (and they both suck), but they are there. Personally I use www.allofmp3.com in Russia. See today's Age newspaper for more details.