Well, I don't know how legal this is, but allofmp3.com is offering it's entire library of mp3s for free download at 128 kbps. Here is my basic (very basic and might be wrong) understanding of the situation: The music industry considers allofmp3 illegal. But allofmp3 is a legal licensee of all the music it distributes, at least for those that it distributes in its home country, Russia. But there is a dispute over whether allofmp3 can legally distribute this outside its country. Most likely allofmp3 will lose its fight, but who knows how long that will take. http://reddit.com/info/mnsw/comments I'm not endorsing this service or saying you should try it. Just fyi.
Yeah, and to correct myself, it is not mp3. It is some kind of proprietary .mp3x format, whatever that is. The player is supposedly to display ads, but I wonder who would advertise on an illegal music server? Maybe this is good for previewing music before you actually buy it?
Seems like after you download, they could always come back later and charge you through the use of their player if they wish. Why not just use usenet groups if that's what you want to do?
AllOfMP3 loses Visa account, switching to ad-supported AllofMP3, the notorious Russian music-selling site, has lost its Visa account and says it will switch to giving away free, ad-supported music. The site claims that its activities are legal under Russian law. Though it may not be legal under other countries' laws for their citizens to download the music, AllOfMP3 says it has a blanket license to sell the music and no obligation to figure out what the laws are in each of its customers' jurisdictions. The US Trade Representative has been threatening to scuttle Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization if they don't shut down AllOfMP3, but nobody in Russia seems to care much about WTO membership. Sitting on one of the world's largest oil reserves makes membership in the WTO somewhat moot -- Russia will always be able to find trading partners. AllOfMP3's new proposed business-model is a little confused. They say that they will give away free music in some kind of DRM wrapper, and force you to watch ads before you listen. But they also say you'll be able to play the music on an iPod, if you buy uncrippled music for cash. But it seems unlikely that they'll be able to ship a working DRM (an oxymoron), and I don't understand how they'll be able to sell you the "premium" iPod versions if they don't have a Visa account -- isn't that the whole problem to begin with? The "ad-player" sounds suspiciously like the business model that Kazaa and other P2P companies retreated to after the P2P venture capital dried up in the face of music industry lawsuits -- a path that led straight to spyware. AllofMP3 said Tuesday that as of Wednesday, its business model would move toward an ad-supported distribution of free content. The company, which previously charged about $1 an album, plans to offer consumers a new software program that allows them to download any song from the site for free. AllofMP3 claims to have a catalogue of hundreds of thousands of albums, increasing at a rate of 1,000 per month. Free-for-all over Russian music site
I hope this doesn't have any ancilliary effect on mp3search.ru (now called gomusic.ru). I love that website and buy all my music there. They are quite similar to the way allofmp3.com used to be.
Why not just learn to use torrents instead of giving those crazy Russians your cash? I used to use mp3search.ru all of the time, but once I gave my soul to the BitTorrent gods...I was saved.
I use that site as well. I will wait to see what is going to happen before adding money to my account. What kind of selection is there with Bit Torrent? The stuff I like can be hard to find sometimes. The good thing about gomusic is that they are quick at taking requests and finding stuff that a I like.
I for one love Usenet mp3 binary groups. But RoaderRunner and Earthlink has sever completion problems ... I was pissed when an entire album I wanted was up on Usenet but 2/3 parts were missing from each multi-part mp3. I finally broke down and bought a seperate Usenet service: Usenet Monster. I get 5Gb of download for $3/month, with Rollover Gigs™. Completion so far has been excellent.
