Thoughts on allofmp3.com

December 26, 2003 11:38 AM

Do you / Have you use(d) "allofmp3.com"? Curious about it, but feel uneasy about giving credit card # to a Russian Internet Co., among other concerns... Would love to hear your experiences with them, good-bad+ugly!
posted by limitedpie to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Never used it, but a quick scan of the site sets my Spidey Sense to tingling. Curious as to why you'd want to use this site; If you're looking for legit online music, stick with the big boys, like Rhapsody, iTunes or (cringe) Napster. If legality is not a concern, then go with one of the Peer to Peer clients, such as WinMX, Limewire, or KazaaLite.
posted by Optamystic at 1:39 PM on December 26, 2003

The site was discussed in this thread, where this link was provided.

I hope this would be of help to you.
posted by Masi at 2:20 PM on December 26, 2003

I have used the service. My thoughts:

a) Seems legit from a customer standpoint (no suspicious use of my CC after using it).

b) All files were properly encoded/labeled--got what I expected.

c) Customer service is outstanding (all responses were recieved within hours of emailing them).

d) You have no control on how the files are named, which I found annoying. For instance, track # is not part of the file name and therefore has to be added manually or you'll be listening to the tracks out of order.

e) I'm on a mac and though I understand they have a program for windows that allows download management I could only download two tracks at a time, which was frustrating. If you use Speed Download (mac program) you can get around this, but I'd cancelled the service before hearing of this software.

f) As far as I can make out, they are not a legal service--ie, they do not pay artists/labels. This is the reason I cancelled my account after a single month even though I felt it was an excellent service in most every other regard.

g) One thing to note is that the 1000 tracks/month for $ thingy does not allow you to encode at any rate you'd like. It craps out at 192 (I think, though it may have been 160). You can encode higher, but the tracks don't count as a single download. (It's hard to explain but is in their rules in the small print). If 160 is fine for you, this shouldn't matter.
posted by dobbs at 2:48 PM on December 26, 2003

Masi's second link has someone stating: First as to its legitimacy: Allofmp3 is a completely legitimate service.

Which seems ridiculous to me. Why? Because of this page on their site. If they can't even find the album themselves, there's no way the artists are being compensated.
posted by dobbs at 2:56 PM on December 26, 2003

Just because they're not paying the artists doesn't mean it's not legal. While russia is a signatory to the Bern Convention, they might well have some loophole in their copyright law that allows this. Get a russian lawyer if you want to be sure, though that may quite possibly be beyond pretty much anyones music budget.
posted by fvw at 3:26 PM on December 26, 2003

this was cool, from the link Masi gave: a list of all the free stuff you can get from them (but you have to be signed up)
posted by amberglow at 3:51 PM on December 26, 2003

fvw, it may be legal on their end, due to loopholes, but it more than likely isn't allowable for people outside russia to DL. They say in their FAQ that it's legal in Russia but make it the responsibility of the end user to check for downloading laws in their own country.
posted by dobbs at 4:26 PM on December 26, 2003

Perhaps not in the US, but downloading of music for personal use is legal here in the netherlands, and I think the same goes for canada (wasn't there some post about that recently?)
posted by fvw at 11:38 PM on January 1, 2004