Allofmp3 Restarts Business

An anonymous reader writes "With a pretty short message on their blog, Allofmp3 announced that they will resume their music store soon. According to a Russian court, their music store did not violate any copyright law in Russia, so there was no reason for them to keep it closed."

Comments

And lo the beginning of the IP Cold War...

[Anonymous Coward]

Russia has been flexing it's muscles lately in many fields, to re-establish itself as a power in the world. I would not be surprised if this is part of that muscle-stretching exercise.

Then again it could also just be a case of IP laws not synching up between Russia and elsewhere in the world.

If you can't beat em', join em'

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe finally the RIAA will realize that allofmp3's pricing scheme and business model works and proves that if you price it right and don't use DRM, people will readily pay for music even if it is available for free on P2P.

allofmp3 provided/provides:
A great rating/linking system - "People who bought this also bought...","Similar artists..." - Great way to get "the word" out on new music without any advertising costs whatsoever.
Convenience - No DRM, no "special" download app that tied you to Windows (even if just for downloading). (Yes, there was allTunes, but you could always just download using a normal old browser)
Selection - allofmp3's selection was better than any other online music store I've used, except possibly for iTMS, although due to the DRM I haven't touched iTMS since PyMusique/SharpMusique stopped working.

They also happened to have great prices, but I'd happily pay double the prices of what allofmp3 charged.

Rather than try and sue them out of business, the RIAA should instead drive them out of business the capitalist way - with some nice good competition. Offer the same selection, convenience, organization, and interface as allofmp3, and compromise prices between allofmp3's (admittedly too low) and the RIAA's (way too high for "impulse buys" of tracks/albums I'm not sure about.

While the per-track/per-album price of allofmp3 is much lower, many people (myself included) spend MUCH more money in total there because at allofmp3's prices, there is little risk to buying a whole album as an "impulse buy" when you came for just a single track. RIAA pricing encourages single-track purchasing (odd, since the RIAA is so desperate to encourage full-album purchases.)

Re:If you can't beat em', join em'

[YrWrstNtmr]

Maybe finally the RIAA will realize that allofmp3's pricing scheme and business model works and proves that if you price it right and don't use DRM

You can price anything right if you choose not to pay your suppliers.

Re:If you can't beat em', join em'

[Sique]

And according to the russian court, they were paying their suppliers (or at least the representatives of their suppliers) rightly.

Re:If you can't beat em', join em'

[FauxPasIII]

> You can price anything right if you choose not to pay your suppliers.

... but enough about the RIAA.

Re:If you can't beat em', join em'

[Andy Dodd]

Have you seen the breakdown of who gets what from albums these days?

Despite the high prices for the consumer, the supplier (artist) gets almost nothing.

Current track prices are way too high ($1.30 for usable content with an incredibly limited selection), and while allofmp3's were too low (10-25 cents/track depending on length and compression), a compromise somewhere between the two (maybe 50 cents for no-DRM) would likely be quite successful.

They could even reduce advertising budgets significantly and simply use the "similar artists" and "people also bought x" features that most good online stores have nowadays.

Re:If you can't beat em', join em'

[Fallen Kell]

Again, included in their current price is the costs that they have to legally hold aside and give to ROMS when they sell a track/album. The money is already in ROMS hands, they have already collected it. And in ACCORDANCE with LAW! Just because the RIAA and IFPI (which is the new extension) do not like the law doesn't mean that they can do anything about it in the way they are trying (i.e. get the World Trade Unit, and the European Union, and the USA to force Russia to shut down a perfectly legal business by mandating that Russia will not be allowed to join the European Union until it shuts these places down, because they already tried to lobby for the laws to change and failed (it appears that the Russians are not a susceptible to "contributions" as their American and European counterparts)).

They are abiding by their laws as written. ROMS is the legal entity to send copyright payments to under Russian law. ROMS is setup to pay the appropriate copyright royalties to the proper owner(s) when officially notified by the proper owner(s). The check then goes in the mail (and future payments go in the mail as they arrive). They simply have a system in place to make sure the proper owner of the copyright is compensated, and not someone with the false claim to the copyright, and this is in accordance to LAW. Stop complaining that you don't like it. I don't like the fact that women in Saudi Arabia need to keep their heads covered, but that is the law in that country. Same thing with no being able to chew bubble gum in Singapore...

Re:If you can't beat em', join em'

[flink]

Current track prices are way too high ($1.30 for usable content with an incredibly limited selection), and while allofmp3's were too low (10-25 cents/track depending on length and compression), a compromise somewhere between the two (maybe 50 cents for no-DRM) would likely be quite successful.

I wouldn't say that allofmp3 prices were too low. At $0.03/MB, a 3:30 FLAC song weighs in at 22.5MB/$0.67 and a ~62 minute album is 417MB/$12.51. I can walk into Newbury Comics and get most albums on CD for $10 to $14. Buying music online should be cheaper for the consumer, not just more profitable for the distributer, who doesn't pay any of the costs associated with physical media. $1.30 per track on iTunes is outrageous.

(Part of this post was recycled from this one)

Re:Legal nuance

[WED Fan]

SAFE PORT Part II is probably in the works.

The new U.S. law will probably make it illegal to download music from and site hosted in a country that is not in alignment with U.S. IP laws.

Note: I am very much in favor of IP. I think it is a goodness. However, I also believe that terrorist tactics used by the RIAA are immoral and artists, while upholding their IP rights, should disown and disavow the RIAA.

corporations taste of it's own medicine?

[mseidl]

So, it's ok for big corporations to off shore things like manufacturing + tech support to cheaper countries.

But when another company takes advantages of its laws and it effects the company here. Oh noes!

WTO

[WindBourne]

Considering that Russia is now part of WTO, it will be interesting to see what will happen. Russia obeyed their law and agreements that we had with them. But will USA now take this to WTO and object to this? My guess is that USA will lose this appeal, and that will cause numerous other countries to allow other companies in on similar companies. Of course, this comes on top of the WTC looking at allowing Antigua and other countries that were denied off shore betting from USA.

In the end, this could pretty much negate all that W. tried to accomplish during his 8 years. That is the large American companies keep their copyrights under draconian conditions, and receive large royalties.

Re:Legal nuance

[hackstraw]

The new U.S. law will probably make it illegal to download music from and site hosted in a country that is not in alignment with U.S. IP laws.

Why stop at music? Why not all "intellectual property"?

That will in effect make much of the internet "illegal" which would probably be a good thing, because then we will have the choice as to which laws we want to follow. Funny, isn't that how multinational corps work?

Re:Legal nuance

[StikyPad]

No kidding. I, for one, am sick and tired of the RIAA blowing up innocent civilians. Er, wait.. I'm sick of them taking hostages and demanding passage to a foreign country. Oh wait.. I'm sick of them using aircraft as weapons.

Can we stop using the word "terrorism," and its derivatives, to describe any unsavory act? The proper term in this case would be extortion, or perhaps coercive actions. That's not what terrorists do, it's what petty thugs do. When they start storming concert halls with small arms and tear gas, then by all means, let's start calling them terrorists. Until then, can we please keep things in context?