SiriusAddict.com

Lately, there’s been a bit of flurry in the online world about the legality of AllOfMP3.com. While the service is based in Russia, it’s likely not legal for those outside of Russia to use the service. Then again, that’s just an educated guess since I am not up on current laws and know enough about the issue.

Whether or not AllOfMP3 is legal or illegal, the bigger point is that they are getting some attention now from the higher ups when it comes to legality and the RIAA, I can assume, doesn’t like it. But the bigger picture needs to be seen here, I believe. Regardless of the legality of AllOfMP3.com, the corporate companies should be learning something from online music services, popularity, ease of use, and the manner in which the files are distributed.

For example, AllOfMP3 delivers the music files at a cost of 2 cents per megabytes. Often, songs are under 5 cents each depending on the format you choose to download the file. Speaking of formats, you won’t get a choice of what format you want on any other music site. You have the option of OGG, AAC, WMA, FLAC, and others. iTunes doesn’t offer this nor does Napster or the other major competitors. While I understand the need for DRM at times and other times find it tedious and an annoyance, in general customers of online music services don’t want it. If they have no choice, then at least give the customers the option of which format to download the file. The bigger point here is that users feel trapped to a certain format, certain company, etc because no one offers these incentives and new ideas to use their service over another service.

This is where AllOfMP3 excels. They obviously did a little research on what customers want from a music source. They offer varied formats, cheap prices, and consistently high quality songs that are often not found on other major music stores such as iTunes. I know that I personally go to AllOfMP3 to get a song that isn’t on iTunes or is a rare. I have no problem admitting that because, while it may be illegal, the only way for me to obtain some songs is via other means. As an example, Icicle Works – Whisper to a Scream. You couldn’t find this song or artist on iTunes, eMusic, or Napster as of a few months ago. Yet, the song was from 1984. It’s nothing new and should be on these major music services. But guess who had the song? AllOfMP3.com

While I could go on about piracy is bad, artists are losing money, the RIAA is getting greedy, etc. I don’t want to and feel the need not to because I don’t agree with some of those statements nor do I think the RIAA is learning anything from shutting down pirate sites or ‘legitimate’ sites in other countries. If the RIAA was smart and did research on AllOfMP3, torrents, etc and imposed a lesser price than $0.99 per song, I am willing to bet that more people would get online and use digital music download services, assuming the service allowed the download of different formats, easy to remove DRM (by burning to CD and reimporting), and most importantly, cheaper prices. Yet, the RIAA wants to hold it’s ground and keep prices at $0.99 per song where often times, it’s cheaper to buy the album from eBay and get the physical CD, cover, and other items and conveniences that come with the physical CD. Yet, they don’t.