AllOfMP3

AllOfMP3
Pricing model	$0.03 per megabyte of music downloaded
Availability	Russia, legal status in other locations is questionable.

AllOfMP3.com is an online music store based in Moscow, Russia which was founded in 2000 by Mediaservices, Inc. The store sells music encoded in standard, non-protected audio formats at a significantly lower cost than other online music stores.

AllOfMP3's legality is controversial. It is licensed in Russia by the Russian Organization for Multimedia and Digital Systems, a license similar to agreements held by Russian radio stations. AllofMP3 states that this agreement allows it to legally distribute music from all artists and all labels. However, some recording companies and artist advocacy groups claim that the license is illegal, or doesn't cover online distribution.

As of February, 2007, some users are unable to order songs.

Revenue

Run by the Moscow company MediaServices, Allofmp3 has an estimated revenue of $30 million a year.^[1] According to the IFPI and various other label representatives the company has so far failed to transfer money to any (western) label. According to the FAQ AllOfMp3 has posted, they are currently sending voluntary additional payments directly to artists, in addition to the collective license fees they pay. However, labels and artists that contacted Allofmp3.com have declared they received no payments at all.^{[citation needed]}

How the service works

The AllofMP3 website offers Russian and English user interfaces. All functions, except for the buying of songs and full length song previews, are available to unregistered users (and full length preview of songs is restricted to individuals who have spent a total of $50 or more on the website). Registration is free. The store maintains an account balance for each user (and starts off each user with a balance of $0.20, which will let you buy up to 7 MB of songs). While a user's account has a positive balance, he or she can continue downloading music. To do so, the user selects the files for download from the store's catalog.

Pricing model

Unlike some US-based music stores such as Apple's iTunes Music Store, AllOfMP3 charges for the volume of data downloaded, not for individual songs. As of August 13, 2006, the basic price for downloaded music is $0.03 per megabyte, increased from the previous $0.02 per megabyte set on January 15, 2005. As a basis of comparison, a typical four-minute, 128 kbit/s song downloaded from the iTunes Music Store would cost $0.99, whereas this same song at the same bitrate would cost $0.12 to download at AllofMP3.com.

This price is often reduced by a complicated system of discounts based on cumulative usage, promotions, and type of payment. These discounts can reduce the effective price of downloads by up to one third of the original cost.

Payment methods

Currently, following the ban^[2]^[3] of AllofMP3.com by Visa and MasterCard, one typically funds a user account via Xrost. Xrost in turn receives money through credit card payments through Click&Buy (for example using a Visa card), or in exchange for Ukash, a credit system within Europe whereby one purchases 'e-money' over the counter at PayPoint outlets or similar. Ukash is not supplied by retailers in the US, but is now actively sold on EBay.^{[citation needed]} Following this method, no credit information is revealed to AllofMP3. The Xrost system went temporarily offline in early 2006.

As of mid-2006, AllofMP3 has offered the ability to pay for the order through an SMS message in the UK and Australia.

As of February 2007 - Account top-ups on the allofmp3.com site refer users to the sister site, alltunes.com. From here, accounts could be topped up with Visa or Mastercard, the credits automatically flowing back to the allofmp3.com account. However from at least 8 February 2007, all Visa and Mastercard payments appear to have been halted, and Allofmp3 customer services replies to queries with the following form letter: "Dear user, Unfortunately it is not possible to pay by a credit card for the time being. Please use ways of payment currently available to you account. If you still prefer to pay by a card please check the site news, we will inform everyone when credit card payments become available again. Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience."

File:AllTunes.JPG

The allTunes application.

Download formats

A user can choose from a variety of audio codecs for audio files, including MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Musepack (MPC). Lossless audio codecs, such as FLAC, are also available for some albums. AllofMP3 encodes most music straight from source with its Online Encoding Exclusive service, so gapless albums will provide gapless playback, unlike most other music services. There is no extra charge for using the Online Encoding Exclusive service. The user can set the codec parameters, including the desired bitrate, ensuring superior quality over other music download services such as iTunes and Napster. The audio files are then added to the user's download list. In some cases, a user will have to wait until the files are encoded before they are available for retrieval. Once ready, they can then be downloaded using a web browser, the Microsoft Windows application allTunes (the look and feel of which is heavily based on iTunes), the older application AllofMP3 Explorer (which is available in a Mac version), a download manager, or command-line utilities like wget (the "My Downloads" list offers a "list of links" which can be written to a file and used as input for such tools). Simple download managers for other operating systems (Linux, BSD, etc.) are also available (see external links section at the bottom of this page). Download speeds vary but typically hover around 40-120 kilobytes per second on broadband connections.

The files are unrestricted, i.e. they do not contain digital rights management information, allowing unrestricted use between multiple computers and digital audio players, unlike most other music download services, which limit the use of the music you purchase and the platforms on which you may play it. The website also offers free, full album previews, streamed at a bitrate of 24 kilobits per second (roughly equivalent to analog telephone audio quality). These full song previews (only available to registered users who have paid a total of at least US$50) can double as a free online jukebox, albeit one with a low sound quality. Registered users who have spent less than $50 have access to 90 second samples, and unregistered users have access to 30 second samples.

Music for Masses

On 18 October 2006, AllofMP3 released a program called Music for Masses.^[4] This program allows users to download any song from the site for free. However, the files are encoded in a proprietary MP3 format with DRM (.mp3x) that can only play in the Music for Masses player. The user also cannot transfer these files to a portable media device. However, on October 25th 2006, Engadget reported that the proprietary DRM had been cracked, allowing users to turn the .mp3x files into regular non-DRMed mp3s. AllofMP3 soon responded to the crack by releasing an updated version of their Music for Masses software, rendering the crack unusable.

There is a limit in "free mode" so you are only allowed to download approximately 1000 songs before you must pay to refill your "free" balance.

As of December 21, 2006, AllofMP3 has disabled its Music for Masses player and no longer offers free downloads of the Music for Masses player nor its proprietary formatted .mp3x music files. This may be a direct result of numerous hacks that have been created since the inception of Music for Masses program that allowed any user to convert .mp3x music files into regular .mp3 music files. It remains to be seen if AllofMP3 will release a new Music for Masses application in the future or if this is the end of the experiment that AllofMP3 created to give hundreds of thousands of albums away for free.

Audio quality issues

AllOfMP3 has been criticized for its use of transcoding to deliver custom encoded files^{[citation needed]}. Transcoding in audio involves the re-encoding of an already compressed file, and is known to diminish audio quality and introduce compression artifacts; files ordered under AllOfMP3.com's "Online Encoding" service are transcoded from a 384kbit/s free format to the format of the user's choice. Most listeners cannot hear the encoding artifacts, however some believe that the recompression artifacts can make the audio "grating."

For the last three years, nearly all new tracks to the service have been provided using an "Online Encoding Exclusive" (OEEX) service, which encodes from lossless or uncompressed formats, and while in the main this provides better quality audio, it has been found by some customers who have downloaded uncompressed files that some of the (supposedly) uncompressed files they have purchased have in fact been encoded from lossy sources. In some cases, comparisons to the original CDs have shown that the CDs themselves were recorded from lossy sources. However a randomly picked FLAC-encoded file is usually indistinguishable from its uncompressed (ripped from CD) version.

Other legal issues

On June 1, 2006, the New York Times reported^[5] that US trade negotiators have warned Russia that the continued existence of AllOfMP3 could jeopardize Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization. On September 28, 2006, the United States Trade Representative reiterated this in remarks to the US Chamber of Commerce.^[6] On October 4, 2006, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters that "I have a hard time imagining Russia becoming a member of the WTO and having a Web site like that up and running that is so clearly a violation of everyone's intellectual property rights."^[7]

On December 18, 2006,^[8] the RIAA, on behalf of EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group filed a $1.67 trillion lawsuit against the site. That equates to $150,000 for each of 11 million songs downloaded between June to October 2006, and exceeds Russia's entire GDP.^[9]^[10] $150,000 is the statutory limit for copyright infringement awards in the United States.^[11]

Unsolicited email/spam

Beginning in late September 2006, many users have reported receiving large volumes of unsolicited email advertisements for pornographic websites to site-specific email addresses on private domains. It is still unknown whether the email addresses were obtained from allofmp3.com or a payment processor, and whether it involved a deliberate sale or a security compromise. Long-standing account email addresses have been attacked only recently.^[12]^[13]^[14]

February 2007 Issues

As of February, 2007, some users report that they are unable to buy any music from the site. When they try to buy a track, the following notice appears:

Ordering is temporarily disabled

We are sorry, but the ordering is currently disabled.

The site is undergoing scheduled maintenance. Please check back later.

(Or the similar message in Russian.)

Other users say they are not experiencing such problems.

As of 10th and 11th February, 2007 financing an account on allofmp3 has become almost impossible for most people. The Visa and Mastercard payment route via Xrost is not working and alltunes (an allofmp3 brand) can only accept payments to pass to allofmp3 from Diners' Card or JCB. There now appears to be no way to finance an account via either Mastercard nor Visa. No information as to how long this will continue seems to be available on allofmp3. Xrost carries a 48-hour maintenance sign but that has been displayed for more than 48 hours and does seem more open-ended than the firm suggests.

References

External links

Official websites

AllOfMP3 homepage
AllOfMP3 blogs
ROMS, Russia's copyright licensing service for multimedia and digital content.