Slashdot Mirror
Russian Music Site Offering Legal Songs By The MB
An anonymous reader writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting on a Russian Music site that is offering legal digital music by the MB. The site apparently has a license from the Russian Music authorities to legally distribute songs for a fraction of the price of what is being offered by iTunes and others. The report from SMH is here. Amazingly, the site offers files in any format and encoding you choose and rips it on the fly. Notifications by email follow when the songs are ready for download. Sounds a little to good to be true :)"
click me
http://www.allofmp3.com/
Been using their services for half a year now without any problems. They're licenced with the Russian equivalent of the RIAA, so I don't see where the problem is.
This is a great example of the free market combined with the internet. I'm able to buy goods and services from wherever it suits me.
"Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
Besides, in post-Soviet Russia, the songs MegaByte You!
Er....
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
It doesn't rip it on the fly, it encodes it on the fly. Big difference (thousands of CD-ROMs???)
More importantly, has anybody tried this? I found it many months ago, but I am loath to send my credit card data to a semi-shady Russian site, and I am worried that credit card records could be used to go after people who used the site when it (inevitably) gets shut down eventually. What do people think?
Tom.
Oh arse
$5 for 500 megabytes. Now this is more like it.
Considering that the RIAA sued weblisten for RE-distributing allofmp3.com's content, but didnt sue them, this is probably legal..
Official GOD FAQ.
Dear users!
We proud to announce a new encoding function called Online Encoding Exclusive, which is a part of the "Online Encoding" service and became available at AllOFMP3.com in the test mode. Online Encoding Exclusive enables you to:
1. Encode music with LossLess encoding algorithms (Monkey's Audio, FLAC and OptimFrog) using the data of original audio CD as a source.
2. Encode music with our usual encoders (MP3, Ogg, etc.) using the data of original audio CD as a source.
Albums, that available for ordering through Online Encoding Exclusive service are marked with a special label . The amount of such albums will grow from day to day. We hope that you'll enjoy our new service.
More details about Online Encoding Exclusive service.
AllOFMP3.com team.
YAFIRL (Yet another Free iPods referral link)
allofmp3.com isn't legal, it migth be in Russia, but that doesn't mean that people outside russia can buy from them legally. If they wish to tell to say Denmark, they must have an agreement with KODA (Danish RIAA), THEY DON'T. Same deal as with Spanish weblisten, legal in Spain, not outside.
It might be a nice service, but I won't recommend using it. If they do not have a deal with the RIAA equivalent in what ever country you're in, it is a waste of money.
Don't trust sites that sell music that doesn't have an agreement with a record label or the artists.
The website is in English.
Oh you rat bastards. I thought I had a good thing going. I was getting all the music I wanted for cheap, and the site was under the radar enough not to upset the sue-happy music bizfolk. Now my speeds are going to be shot, the company is going to be closed, and I'll have to go back to buying my four cds a year. So, once again slashdot screws me. To that I say fuck you very much.
Oh ya, I almost forgot. I found out about them from a slasdot post of somebodys. So, uhh, forget what I just said.
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
If you think that then you must live in some authoritarian state like ....
Who'd have thought it... Russia..the home of the brave and the free.
I've been using another service from Russia, MP3 Search Club with great success for some time now. Frankly, I'm surprised this qualifies as news. This service, too, is liscenced by the "Russian RIAA". As a Canadian, I find this site an invaluable compliment to my right to make personal copies of music to share with others. ;-P Given, though, that this other site lets you encode in your favorite format, I'll probably soon switch over to them.
I am afraid I am too old to have heard of "The MB" so why would I want their music ? Are they one of those new-fangled rap / hip-hop groups ? All I can think of is The Moody Blues.
They Legal Info page on allofmp3.com has changed since I first started using the site (great service, they're definately NOT stealing credit card info), but the gist of their old legal page is that they were paying license fees as if they were broadcasting their music over radio; hence the license fee per song for them is probably less than a penny.
:)
The best part about the site? After getting your account upgraded, you are able to rip and upload music to them and recieve DOUBLE your size credit in downloads
A lot of people, apparently. Including me. I've been very happy with it.
I don't think they even accept credit cards directly; at least, I don't recall seeing that option when I signed up.
I signed up using PayPal. That's one reason I took the plunge: a (more or less) reputable American intermediary for the financial end. I have a balance, that's deducted from for each download. When it's near empty, I go to PayPal and fill 'er up again. It's pretty painless.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
They'll make it up in volume.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
AllofMP3 has a license from the artists' association in Russia, not the record labels - i.e. the ASCAP equivalent, not the RIAA equivalent. Under Russian law this is sufficient, according to the website. (I'd give a link, but the server is slashdotted at the moment...)
It's probably great for Russians. But for Americans at least, the site is illegal.
Our laws prohibit most unauthorized distribution and reproduction of copyrighted works in the US per 17 USC 106. The party that can authorize it is the US copyright holder -- this is prone to be a different entity than rights holders abroad.
While some degree of importation is allowed per 602 and 109, this doesn't qualify. A copy isn't merely being brought into the country, but rather due to the way computers work (see the infamous MAI v. Peak case, which while wrong is commonly relied upon), a new copy is being made on the downloader's end that did not originate in Russia, and thus wasn't imported as 602 requires. (Though what it was copied _from_ did -- it's the difference betweeen a CD that can be brought from place to place, and making a tape of what you hear on the phone)
Even the ability to legally import unauthorizedly is somewhat limited; the idea is that if we have copyright laws domestically, to allow people to do an end run around it by operating in a country with less or no copyright, then importing works here en masse would result in things being, well, fucked up, basically. This site basically demonstrates how such a thing might happen.
The Russians are probably fine -- if they're careful, RIAA won't be able to shut them down. OTOH, Americans using the service could get into significant trouble if they're caught.
All that having been said, I'd like to see the law changed to better suit the desires of the public, but for now there are problems for this.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
If you live in Australia, where the article is written, then it is legal The parallel importing of music is legal in Australia. The parallel importing of music helps keep the price down and is evidence of a free market economy working well, unlike the USA with the BSA and MPAA and RIAA and other IP outfits where these gestapo like organisations control the free flow of information.
Does it go on forever?
While legal in Russia, it may not be legal in YOUR country to use their services.
Just a thing to bear in mind, if you want to keep a clean path.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
the poster is against outsourcing? Slashdot is a diverse group of individuals voicing their diverse opinions, which all conflict. I am tired of individuals saying "gotcha" when two completely SEPARATE individuals voice CONFLICTING opinions. Btw, if ALL prices (not just wages) were to drop at the same rate, then, yes, nobody would be complaining about outsourcing. The problem is that there are market inefficiencies that are keeping some prices the same while others go down.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
..then it probably is, and that's why I treat these claims with a hefty degree of scepticism. Let's look at a few points:
If they claim they're legal because "we're licensed as if we were broadcasting the material", then as far as I understand you have no right to make or keep a recording of anything they might broadcast. Broadcasting is "we broadcast it and you listen", and there's no automatic right to tape records off the radio.
It's highly possible that the reason they haven't been closed down is that taking legal action against shady Russian entities is extremely difficult at the best of times.
If they're interested in people uploading stuff *to* them in exchange for download rights, then the legitimacy of their source material seems doubtful.
Ultimately, applying Occam's razor to this story makes me wonder that if it's so spotlessly legal, why isn't everyone setting up stores like this on Russian territory?
Anyway, something here smells sufficiently fishy for me to be extremely sceptical of the wisdom of giving them money.
You knew that one of these days record companies would "get it" and find a way to sell their wares over the internet. Now I await them finding a way to do it without charging money.
... followed by the rest of the song.
Better yet, the record company should pay YOU (yes, in Soviet Russia, etc. etc.) to listen.
Example:
You download the latest hit from Britney Spears. (I'll repeat: "you download", not me.)
About halfway through the song, there's an ad for Pepsi
Pepsi pays you a nickel (or whatever) for actually listening to the damned thing.
"4. PROFIT -- !!!"
-kgj
-kgj
Given that the site is located in Russia, it is (or at least was originally) probably intended mainly for Russian users. I doubt any of the service administrators speak native English. Think how you'd feel if you had a site in English and Russian, and Russian users called it "shady" because your Russian was bad. Then think again on your comment.
I believe this has been tested in court over here, and it's still legal to "grey-market" CDs and other products.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
For anyone interested in grabbing AllofMP3's top-ten, I've compiled their current list.
... Water ... on the Bread Line
10. Boris - Boris Sings the Blues
9. Svetlana - Oops, Svetlana did it again
8. Katerina Jones - Feels like Moscow
7. Natalya - Toxic
6. Igor - Looking For You
5. Leonid - Damita Leonid
4. Yuri - Yuri, Unplugged
3. Karina - 99 Bottles of Vodka
2. Sonya - The Red Album
1. 50 Rubles - Get Warm or Die Tryin
- Product placement - a well tested system that has helped reduce theatre and DVD prices for us all, with no apparent compromises made to the movies we watch. Indeed, some of us use this to fund our postings to Slashdot, and when I sit back, drink an ice cool refreshing Vanilla Coca Cola, and scan Slashdot.org on my Apple PowerBook, I can see the advantages straight away.
- Government grants - we the people benefit from music, so surely what we want is we the people to fund it. A minor increase in our taxes will ensure the money is well spent, providing grants for individual artists. A diverse and innovative range of music will be at our disposal, once those in charge of issuing grants determine what music deserves to be made, according, of course, to national community values. Of course, compromises will have to be made - music about sex, politics, religion, or that uses any of the words George Carlin was fined for protesting about his inability to use on television, will obviously not be made. We don't want tax payer's money spent on that kind of filth, and if the government issuing grants means that alternative sources of funding dry up, well, that's just a positive side effect that will keep America clean.
- Music can be funded through concerts - I don't need to tell you that I'd much rather pay $50 to see Orbital or The Chemical Brothers in concert than listen to them on my iPod lying on my bed with my eyes closed. I mean, can you imagine? Those samples, being acted out and mixed live. Definitely a viable way of funding music, because everyone who likes a particular type of music wants to see concerts and sees concerts as an appropriate way of listening to music.
- Isn't it about time artists just created music for the love of it? I mean, they're creating something, surely that's enough. Surely they should fund their day to day living expenses by working a full time job. Sure, if they have a full time job they're unlikely to have the time and energy to produce much, but that's better than being a lazy, scrounging, whiner who insists on making us pay them a few dollars for something that enriches our lives and helps make us happy. Our praise should be enough, surely? Ungrateful whiners!
And those are just the excellent funding ideas from the top of my head (actually El Reg's and the many Slashdotters heads, from memory.) Music can be free, all we have to do is not pay for it!You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But ideally they're representing artists rights, put to that position by artists...
That is not correct. The *RI* organizations represent the recording industry, not artists. Recording artists are represented by organizations like the Recording Acadamy and the Recording Artists Coalition --organizations which are often at odds with the RIAA.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
The primary interest in this to me is how it points out the growing gap between the major content conglomerates' business models and the reality of what they're producing. We all know the prices on CDs are ridiculously high compared to their production costs - one or two dollars versus ten or twenty, very very roughly. With online it has become even more ridiculous - pennies to deliver the data versus a dollar or more to buy a song. Yet Apple tells us it can't make money.
The lesson I wish was being learned here is that we have entered the age where a recording contract with a major label is like a huge freaking albatross around your neck. The reason Apple can't make money on iTunes is because between the cumbersome necessity of verification and the enormous skim the labels are demanding there's nothing left over - bringing the ridiculous situation where they can't make money selling data transfers of say 3-10 MB for a buck.
The labels are indeed to blame but I personally don't want to rectify the situation by finding a way to get their stuff for free or extra cheap. I'd much rather see artists realize that they don't need the labels anymore, they just need some technical help and better organized consumers. Just as anyone can now go and pay someone a pretty nominal amount to burn CDs in bulk with whatever data they want on them, anyone can now go and pay an even more nominal fee per bit to have someone serve whatever data they want on demand. Screw Russia, go hit http://www.bitpass.com and check the music offerings - songs for pennies. That's a real revolution, my friends.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
As an artist/musician myself, I won't *ever* sign with a label. That being said, I know a number of my fellow musicians/friends who *did* sign with a label, and I can safely say they don't give a rip if you buy the music they created for the labels from Russia, Ethiopia, or simply d/l it from a P2P or steal it off the damned shelf at your local record store! Unless your sales put you near the top, as an artist signed with a label, you make next to *nothing* from sales. You actually make *much* more from the damned T-shirt sales at your shows than you do from record sales if you're signed with a label! Have no fear, if you're worried about how much money you're taking out of the mouths of starving artists/musicians by screwing the RIAA/labels don't. You aren't. The RIAA/labels beat you to that decades ago.
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.