A Kid in the Musical Candy Shop
For many of us, listening to music adds to our quality of life — and even helps maintain our mental health. So how would it feel if you suddenly found yourself at a paid download service selling music for one-tenth what iTunes charges? What if you could download entire albums for less than you’d spend on a cup of coffee? Would you grab all you could? (After all, it is good for your mental health, right?) What about those nagging ethical questions telling you such a cheap music download service could not possibly be legitimate? Yesterday, I had exactly that experience. I’d like to hear how others might experience it!
Better than iTunes?
Don’t get me wrong: I love the iTunes Music Store!
It’s true, the iTunes music encoded with 128 kbps AAC is not even remotely up to CD-quality, regardless of what the marketing machines may try to tell you. But often, I’d rather have a ‘good enough’ copy of a single track than have no other way of buying that piece of music except by hunting down an entire CD. And since I refuse to buy CDs that are copy protected, iTunes also provides a great way to buy music which would otherwise come with CD copy protection without supporting the recording industry’s attempts to shove inferior (copy protected) products down consumers’ throats. (Discs by Dido and Norah Jones, which were otherwise unavailable in the UK except on CDs with copy protection, were among my first iTunes album purchases.)
But then yesterday, I re-discovered a service I’d heard about a few years ago but had never bothered to visit: AllofMP3.com.
When you buy music at AllofMP3.com, you can choose your own encoding rate (128, 256, 320, etc.) and your own codec (AAC, MP3, WMA, etc.) and then pay by the megabyte (2 US cents per megabyte, to be exact). You can even choose lossless encoding, which enables you to burn a CD which is byte-for-byte identical to the original. So, if you choose 128 kbps AAC, a 4-minute song will set you back around 8 cents. That compares to 99 cents on the US iTunes Music Store, or 79 pence on the UK iTunes Music Store. If you choose 320 kbps AAC, as I did, you will still only pay around 20 cents. An entire album, depending on length and your choice of encoding, goes for a dollar or two.
It doesn’t have such a slick interface as iTunes, but for sheer musical value for money, AllofMP3.com wins, hands-down.
And forget peer-to-peer file sharing networks! At 10 or 20 cents per song, why bother with the patchy quality — and, um, illegal nature — of P2P music downloading again?
Background on the Service, and the Ethical Catch
There had to be a catch, didn’t there?
AllofMP3.com operates from the Russian Federation, and although they have been investigated for copyright infringement by the Russian authorities, they have also been declared to be operating in full compliance with Russian law. In Russia, that means they pay usage fees for the music they provide to a government body called ROMS; as long as they pay those fees to the government, apparently it is fully legal for them to sell the music they do.
Where it all gets a bit dodgy, however, is in their relationship with the record labels — who apparently are none too happy with the service. I haven’t come across any specific details, but there are numerous references across the web to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) having been trying to shut them down for years.
Regardless of the legal specifics, though, the central ethical problem that I can see is just this: how can the record labels and the artists possibly be getting fair compensation for their work when it is being sold for a mere 2 cents per megabyte? In other words, if we just set aside all the legal details of how the Russian service is operating, the bottom line is that I can buy a high quality copy of a single track for around 20 cents; what proportion of that 20 cents ever makes it back to a musician or a record label, and is that sufficient compensation for them? I am no fan of record labels — which grab the lion’s share of industry revenues, leaving comparatively very little to the artists who actually make the music — but I have to wonder if this is too harsh even for them.
And if the system is not returning sufficient compensation to musicians or the record labels, I can’t help but wonder should I even use it?
Technology and Proximal Versus Distant Effects
One of the difficulties of this ethical question is that the immediate, proximal effects for me are very positive: I can buy a large amount of music, at a very high quality, for very little money. That is very good for me. The counterbalancing negative effects — the ultimate impact on the recording industry, and on the artists who actually create the music — are much more distant and, as a result, are harder to quantify, and harder to take seriously. Buying music at a price which I believe to be too low to support the industry is not like stealing a little old lady’s purse, where the proximal effects for me (gaining a little old lady’s purse) are immediately juxtaposed with the proximal effects for someone else (a little old lady losing her purse).
The march of technology is very good at creating these types of situations, in which it is very quick and easy (and inexpensive) to garner benefit for oneself without any immediate recognition of negative effects on someone else.
Using the Music Downloading Service — Your Reactions?
So, are you convinced you should not buy music for one tenth the price iTunes charges? If you are, there’s no need to read further.
If you do want to try it, I’d be very interested to know exactly how you feel about the ethics of using it: how does it feel actually downloading the music? Are you like a kid in a candy shop, grabbing everything you can as quickly as you can? Do you download a few tracks and then decide it’s unfair on the record labels? Or are you just glad to have found this article, and you’d really rather not think about any ethical questions behind it?
Mechanics of Using AllofMP3.com
If you do find yourself mozying on over to AllofMP3.com, you might at first wonder whether it’s even safe to provide your details to a company operating from the Russian Federation — a part of the world not exactly known for its financial clarity or consumer protection. Not to worry: although you can pay directly via credit card if you wish to do so, there’s actually no need to give them your credit card details or any other personal information except an email address.
Their support for PayPal apparently comes and goes, reportedly as a result of PayPal trying to maintain a clean image and not be associated with questionable business operations. But there’s another payment option, called ‘Xrost’, billed as a sort of electronic gift card service. You give Xrost a name and an email address, send them a PayPal payment from that email address, and they immediately give you a PIN. Enter that PIN back at AllofMP3.com, and you are instantly credited with the amount.
I’ve read comments on the web saying to stay away from Xrost, that it all must be a scam, that they don’t encrypt your personal data, that they can’t possibly be making money, etc., etc. But if you nose around a bit, I believe it’s fairly obvious that Xrost is nothing more than a front for AllofMP3.com’s PayPal account. In other words, since AllofMP3.com has trouble keeping its own PayPal account active, the company has simply set up a separate ‘gift card’ service: customers pay Xrost via PayPal, and AllofMP3.com gets the money. (I.e., there is no need for Xrost to ‘make a profit’: it’s only a way for AllofMP3.com to receive payments via PayPal.) Since Xrost is merely a conduit for payments to AllofMP3.com, they don’t take any sensitive personal details anyway, and there is therefore no need for them to encrypt any details.
Again, if you go via Xrost, you do not need to provide anything to anybody associated with the service except a name (not even a real one, if you wish) and an email address. The only personal information you provide to anyone is to PayPal — so, if you trust PayPal, you can trust the process.
Come Back and Tell Us!
And don’t forget: if you do visit AllofMP3.com, please come back and let us know how you experienced the whole thing, and what it was like to consider (or not consider) the ethical questions about buying music so cheaply.
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This article was last reviewed by on Friday, 30th September 2005. You can leave a response below.
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30 Responses to “A Kid in the Musical Candy Shop”
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Tomas Martin30
until the music industry comes up with a similar system, sites like allofmp3 will exist. It would be far fairer for itunes to price downloads per megabyte, for instance - it always galls me to pay 99c for an introduction track of 30s, that without which the album wouldn’t be complete. the industry is being simply immoral to charge the same price for downloads as cds - there are so many more costs involved with a cd, in distribution to shops as well as manufacturing - all those store clerks have to be paid.
I think the music industry will be caught out by this. Everyone hates the RIAA (voted most evil corporation in the world) and musicians are starting to realise that the old system of many middle managers is not working and not giving them nearly enough share of the profit.
within five years, i expect we’ll see a site much like allofmp3, maybe slightly more expensive but not much, run by independent musicians. as soon as a couple of big artists go that way, to selling their own music online and getting much larger percentages of the profits, it’s all over for the music execs.
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Dan29
I’m a huge fan of Allofmp3.com and like others here have spent a lot on it in recent times, and I’ve been happy to use Xrost to fund my purchases securely. However I’ve recently discovered that I can’t use the Xrost site to top up my balance: there’s a message there saying that the server is being worked on and normal service will resume in 48 hours. It’s now been a lot longer than that. Anyone else had the same problem?
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Gadianton28
IMHO, as far as the ethics are concerned, the question really is who gets the money. From what I gather from the Wikipedia article on allofmp3, neither the record companies nor the artists get any money. Instead, the money goes to the Russian government and allofmp3 itself. Now, I’m not exactly the largest fan of the Russian government and I am not too eager to support them with my cash. Moreover, if the site is selling music that is not their property and not giving any money to those people whose property it is, it really looks like selling stolen goods, no matter whether it is legal (because of some loopholes) or not. So — and please correct me if I’m wrong — it looks like that your money is going to (a) a repressive regime and (b) people who sell stolen goods and not to (c) the artists who actually make all the music. Not the kind of people I would like to support, if you ask me. I mean, if North Korea launched its own online music store, it probably would be legal as well, but I definitely would not want to support them with my money (BTW, this is something Kim Jong Il should think about. At least that would be cheesy, and odds are he’d also get some hard currency.)
BTW, I don’t quite understand the bad words about the P2P networks. I’ve never had any issues with quality, you don’t have to hunt down individual songs — the album or even the entire discography is nicely archived in a single file, many albums are available in lossless encoding, and you don’t give any money to people who do not deserve it.
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max27
Just my two cents worth on legality issue: there was a long-standing legal battle between Apple Recording Studios (founded by Beatles and still managing the Beatles’ music) and Apple computers about the name. In the 1990, it was settled that Apple Comps can use the name as long as they don’t sell music. No wonder, they were sued again as soon as they started selling songs in iTunes. I don’t know all the details of the case, but I know they used the argument that they sell data, not music. An argument that, strangely, doesn’t work for AllOfMp3.
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Bulent Boytorun26
I have been using allofmp3.com since March 2005 and purchased numerous songs. There is another similar service in Russia called mp3spy.ru, which is just as good as allomp3.com.
I have also provided my cc details to both of them as well as Xrost, and not one problem so far.
As for the ethics side, as long as the record industry keeps overcharging the public, I see no problem with the opportunities a different country’s laws provide me with.
But, there is another matter that keeps sticking to my mind.
Why bother with downloading? So much HD space going to waste. One can not listen to more than 300 song a day anyway. And that is, if we were to listen to music 24 hours every day!
I think I would rather like to have a service where I have access to ALL the music in the world, ever produced, and I don’t have to download anything. Pay a monthly fee and have access to all archive. Create your own podcasts to get the music into ipod, and you’re done.
A bit like pandora with added flexibility (i.e. you make your own playlists).
Does anyone know a site that provides this kind of a service?
BB
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Graham25
For me the legal and ethical issues are very clear: The Russian authorities have investigated allofmp3.com and determined that they are not breaking any Russian laws. Case closed. The RIAA is lying when they call this an illegal site. It is false to even describe the legality as “murky” or questionable.” One of the fundamental cornerstones of democracy is that individuals (and corporations and websites, etc) are innocent until proven guilty. In fact, in other statements, the RIAA has admitted that allofmp3.com operates within “a loophole” in Russian law! A loophole is the result of an error by lawmakers that left some action legal that someone thinks should be illegal. The Russian government has faced enormous diplomatic pressure to shut this site down, and has even promised to change their laws to make the site illegal. If their actions were already illegal, the Russian government would not need to promise new laws in order to shut them down
The fact is, there is a loophole and it is not illegal (for either allofmp3.com or me) to take advantage of a loophole. It is also not immoral on my part to pay a reasonable price for a superior product rather than an exorbitant price for an inferior product. The recording industry could negotiate a better price from the Russian copyright licensing agency, but they don’t want to price themselves out of the Russian market. Instead, they want to sell their product at a reasonable price in Russia and then sell the same product at an exorbitant price in the North American and Western European markets because the consumers there can afford to pay more. I feel no moral obligation to cooperate with their attempts to gouge me.
We live in a global economy. Every product has a “world price,” the cheapest unsubsidized price it sells for legally, anywhere in the world. In order for a product to sell in any local market for less than the world price, somebody - either government or the owner - has to subsidize that product. In order for a product to sell in any local market for more than the world price, somebody - either government or the owner - has to restrict the consumer’s right to purchase the product at the world price. The more internationally mobile a product is, the harder it is to maintain a higher, discriminatory price in any local market. That’s isn’t immoral; it’s just economics. Music is an extremely mobile product. The world price for music has been established by allofmp3.com to be under 10 cents per song. The music industry has not objected to allofmp3.com selling to Russians at that price. They’ve only objected to allofmp3.com selling to foreigners at that price. They are simply trying to sell their music at the world price in some markets and at a higher, discriminatory price in other local markets where they believe the public is able and willing to pay more then the product is worth. I’m able to pay more than the world price for music, but I am not willing. If diplomatic pressure shuts down allofmp3.com, I will find a new source for un-DRMed music. If I can pay someone a reasonable price for the rights in order to get a high quality recording from a reliable source, I will. If necessary, I will download it for free. There are very few songs that I am willing to pay 99 cents for in a restricted format. (I live in Canada, where it is also not illegal for me to download music for personal use because we pay a levy on all blank recordable media. The levy goes to recording artists to compensate them for unpaid downloads.)
The only reason the Russian government has faced such enormous diplomatic pressure to shut this site down is due to the cowardice of other national governments. Any country that wants to prevent their citizens from purchasing music from allofmp3.com could pass their own law forbidding it, but then they would face the anger of their own voting citizens. Instead, they pressure the Russian government to control the behaviour of people outside of Russia!
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Kevin24
I’ve been using allofmp3 for 9 months now, and have also found that I’ve spent more money here than on any other music service.
The only time I use iTunes is to buy the rare album that’s not on allofmp3. Needless to say, I’ve spent upwards of $300 on allofmp3. Conversly, I spent less than $20 on iTunes in that same time period.
When VISA pulled out of allofmp3, I was skeptical of Xrost/Click & Buy. But I couldn’t resist the call of affordable music, and eventually bit the bullet. I gave click & buy my info, got the pin number for Xrost, and have been downloading away with NO problems whatsoever. I’ve re-upped my account three times now. The fact of the matter is clear - if anyone in the world could offer good quality files at these prices, they would make a fortune. I cringe when I hear someone buying tracks for .99 each. WHY?? If iTunes lowered their prices, I’d spend more of my money there too.
I saw today that a new lawsuit has been brought against allofmp3, and this time it looks serious. That said, I’ll continue to use allofmp3 until the day it gets shut down. I’ll just add money in smaller increments… :)
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hobie23
Yep - just downloaded my collection - all bought from allofmp3.com and they worked fine - you can also get the artwork from itunes for free if youre cheeky!
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Erika22
Can you transfer allofmp3 files to your itunes library so they can be downloaded on to your ipod?
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21
Hi Gezza,
Good point about the availability of some music on allofmp3.com but almost nowhere else — if people want to buy it, why not provide it?
Personally, I’ve had no problems with Xrost payments; also, there’s now the Ukash option as a way of paying money into Xrost (and from there into allofmp3.com). To my mind, one major advantage of using Ukash and Xrost as an intermediary is that it is not necessary to provide any personal details to a third party organisation operating from within Russia. In the UK, anyway, Ukash — which is designed to enable people to make purchases on the web without a credit card — can be bought over the counter at many small shops. Providing a Ukash number (bought with cash) to Xrost then yields a second number, which in turn is provided to allofmp3.com to receive the credit. Although it’s all a bit more complicated than just using a credit card, it also enables customers to keep their personal details to themselves.
All the best,
Greg
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