Comments on “A Kid in the Musical Candy Shop”
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30 Responses to “A Kid in the Musical Candy Shop”
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20
Ethical arguments always have two or more sides. But one argument that seems to have little airing is that many of the albums available on allofmp3 simply are not to be found elsewhere. If records labels are not prepared to put their archives online at close to marginal cost, then they gonna die and few will shed tears.
MC and Visa have stop accepting payments to allofmp3. They’ve wimped out on the possibility of an adverse ruling from a Danish court. For god’s sake, what next? allofmp3 is just too good to lose. The planet will be all the poorer if it departs.
allof mp3 directs you to xrost which then directs you to click & buy, and I started losing confidence in such a roundabout way of transferring what is really just a few bucks.
Anyway, has anyone used xrost and got a credit to allofmp3? Let us know and we can all rejoice.
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jeff19
There have been analysis of the actual cost to the music industry of distributing songs on the internet;because they can minimize the need for any actual hard resources, the cost to THEM is a FRACTION of what it would be if they had to make a hard CD; and comes out to around 20-30 cents per song to produce the same revenue for EVERYONE including the artist that they would receive if they needed to have a cd. So by selling a song for A DOLLAR; they are making a KILLING. GREED KILLS.
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LHam18
I have been using Allofmp3 for more than a year and I am so happy with their service. I have never tried iTunes before since the store isn’t available in my country yet. However, even when I was able to buy from iTunes when I was staying in another country, I wasn’t too happy with the format and quality of the music.
Then I discovered AllofMp3 and I haven’t looked back since. Firstly, it’s cheap and secondly, I am not restricted by the DRM as well as the quality dictated by the online music seller. I once did an comparison between the Allofmp3 and a online music store in my country. Allofmp3 beats the local store both in price (even after currency conversion) and quality.
So far, I haven’t had problems with my credit card being misused. But I haven’t tried the Xrost system yet. The new partner payment services used by xrost requires much more information than I am willing to divulge.
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17
Hi Cycleround,
I hear you on that one: many people have found themselves buying the same music over and over just because of changes in formats!
And on a related note, I wonder what’s going to happen a few years from now when people are going to upgrade their computers and for whatever reason don’t manage to move their music collection successfully to the new machine? In theory, yes, everyone should have backups, and hopefully most users will be sufficiently experienced with their computers to move their music anyway — but I’m guessing there will be more than one pretty unhappy person out there effectively ‘losing’ an entire collection. Add in the extra trickiness of ensuring that the new machine is appropriately authenticated for whatever DRM wrapper is protecting their purchased music, and now there’s a second set of people who do manage the transfer alright but still wind up unable to use the music.
Ouch.
All the best,
Greg -
Cycleround16
I have been “legal” for years. I bought albums, eight tracks, cassettes, CDs then I started downloading Mp3s (many were the sale “album” of songs by the same artists). I started out to stay with the system via Walmart, but I became infuritated with the stupid DRM issue. I would listen to songs and then after a month or so I would get caught by the expired “license”. That was the last straw. I have been using AllofMp3.com for about three years now and it’s been GREAT. I have used Xrost once (all was good) and PayPal the rest of the time. I am just getting ready to try Xrost again as AllofMp3 and PayPal have been separated for a few months now. I am sick of the “legal” issue. What of my rights…I have purchased the same thing again and again and again!!!!
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15
I have written a very important book (at least to me, ha ha!) which, I have posted online. It’s been online since 1997. However, I have yet to receive as much as a single dime for this. But, I would much rather have people read it and not get paid, than have no one read it at all.
Also, we live in the age of information, and just about everything under the sun is accessible. And yet, our brains are only capable of processing so much. So, even if we had a thousand of our favorite CD’S, where would we find time to listen to it all? And what would be the difference between this and say, listening to your favorite radio station? Not much, I would think, aside from a little selectivity. Does that mean we should pay the full price for which, for all intents and purposes, we won’t listen to all that much? I don’t know, I have a full bookshelf of books at home which, I paid full price for by the way, that I hardly ever read. Hmm … It was one of those “got to have” things at the time though.
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14
Hi Nick,
Many thanks for your thoughtful comments on this. I’m especially interested in your thoughts about relative shifts in income across the globe (a topic which of course bears on a much wider area than just music). Although history offers many examples in which increasing competition and efficiency in capital markets have driven down prices and driven up standards of living, when it comes to effects specifically on relative incomes I’m not so sure.
(I mean really not so sure — I don’t necessarily disagree, I just don’t know what to think!)
I wonder whether the competition and efficiency made possible by globalization really do tend to favour an evening out in incomes, or whether they just tend to promote shifts in who is making the money? Is there less deviation from the mean in terms of incomes, or is there more variation in who is enjoying incomes that are far from the mean? Or both? Or could globalization even be neutral in terms of effects on deviation of incomes from the mean?
Intuitively, your suggestion that we’re quickly becoming a ’super economy’ that needs to be balanced makes a great deal of sense. It’s just not clear to me whether that process of balancing will — at least in terms of the distribution of incomes — be more likely to occur as a natural side effect of globalization, or whether globalization might tend to preserve or even exacerbate differences in income.
All the best,
Greg -
13
I have been using AllOfMP3 for about a month or two now. I have added $15 twice to the account to buy new music and it has gone off with almost no hitches so far. AllofMp3 even personally responded to a request of mine.
The service is amazing, and I think that its allTunes downloadable music application rivals iTunes.
I have to agree with many of the past posters. The ethical issues came to mind, I did the same research as you, but in the end it doesn’t really bother me. I beleive that artists are getting some of this money (even if not much), and I think that that is enough. If I ever find that the aritst arent getting the money or very very little, I will look elsewhere.
This un-easily quantifiable commodity called music is hard to set a price on, but I think that in the past it has been WAY WAY too high. I know that artists have to live too and all, but you know, one chooses that lifestyle and you might have to make sacrifices to live on a lower and lower budget. There are people around the world working hard labor day in and day out that live worse lives than the bottom level indie music artist will ever live.
We have to come to grips with this side effect of the new global economy. Everything is going to have to even out more. Rich countries (think US) salaries in general are going to come down (relative to the rest of the growing world) and the rest of the growing worlds salaries are going to come up (relative), until there is more of a balance. Music prices relate to this effect because other countries can obviously support artists at much smaller price points ( I have been to Europe, Egypt and Russia and seen it), while western countries support artists at super escalated price points. It needs to even out if the globalization has anything to say about it. We are quickly becoming a single super economy that needs to be balanced.
On a more local note, I think that the structure of entertainment media distribution is in drastic need of change. Corporations that handle bands are forcing retarted limitations, and even suits on their own customers. To me, it is basically like them saying “you don’t wipe our asses with enough $100 bills already, so we are going to sue you into paying us more money”. It is not a way to get on your customers good side. I beleive that it is a sign to the begining of the end of big record labels.
Music needs to come way down in price, and the price needs to be set so that it is more convenient for the consumer to pay the fee. More so than it is to use a free/illegal method. As time goes on, this price point is going to become lower and lower. Where too low is too far, I don’t know. But if you think about it, the lower in price you go, the more people are going to be able to afford it and the more sales you get. It should continue to even out, although not indefinetely.
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12
Hi Gene,
Well, that sounds like a bit of an adventure! I wonder did you consider using the Xrost system instead, so as to avoid exposing your credit card details? (I.e., not the PayPal system, which is usually unavailable, but the PayPal-Xrost intermediary system, which allows you to transfer funds without revealing your identity.)
In any case, I’m certainly inclined to agree with you — when working with largely unknown merchants inside Russia, I’ll keep my credit card details to myself, thank you!
All the best,
Greg -
Gene11
Concerns regarding allofmp3.com I had normally used Paypal to access allofmp3.com but PayPal at the allofmp3.com site was down for a period of time, I opted to use my credit card to buy music credits at the sight. Keep in mind, this was a credit card I had been using infrequently. About 1 year later that credit card number was used illegally in Pennsylvania (I’m in North Carolina)to purchase computer equipment at TigerDirect.com. Within a few weeks I received a call from Law authorities in Pennsylvania. They had arrested a number of individuals making purchases with stolen credit cards including mine. They traced the access to the stolen credit card numbers back to Russia. I don’t recommend using a credit card at allofmp3.com.
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