Allofmp3. If you had heard of it, you’d know that for a time it was ‘the second most popular mp3 download site on the web’. It was popular because it was especially inexpensive, and the user could decide on the bitrate of their songs (ie the quality of the song).Also the music was DRM free (Digital Rights Management is a technique used by principally fruit based websites to prevent the user playing a downloaded track onto something other than the user’s fruit based audio device). This meant that once a song was downloaded from allofmp3, it could be played on your mp3 player (fruit based or not), your car stereo or even burned onto a cd and played on your Gran’s stereo system!
If you hadn’t heard of the website, now you have….
You’ll see the expression ‘was’ is used relatively a lot in the earlier section. This is because allofmp3.com is no more. Deceased, finished, scrapped, dead. And why is this you ask. Well, there was a vast difference between what allofmp3 said it was giving back to the music business, and what the music industry’s official voice was saying…. The website was located in Russia, and the law there actually permitted businesses to distribute music (not physical cds etc, just music), as long as a royalty was paid to a collection organization, which would deliver the money back to the copyright owner. These laws were created pre internet, when the circulation of music was via the radio.
So allofmp3 were saying they were giving a cut to a collection organization, and the western music business was saying they were receiving zilch. Both sides could be speaking the absolute truth of course, if no-one was applying for the funds from the agency.
So the jist of it is that a proportion of sales could be with the agency, but the western music industry would not make a claim for it. Moreover why would they? Allofmp3 was selling mp3 tracks at a fifth of the price of iTunes. If the industry condoned this then they would actually be admitting that their music was costly, and then, if everybody believed allofmp3 was whiter than white, rather than greyer than grey, the industry would have to sell five times as much music to churn out the same amount of money! Gotcha
(By the way – the going price for a cd in Russia at the time was about $2, so if you lived in Russia, allofmp3 wasn’t the fantastic good deal that it was to users in Europe / USA)
Ultimately the website was closed down by the Russian authorities, when noises were made in pretty high places that if Russia wanted to become a member of the World Trade Organisation, it’s most infamous mp3 download site would have to go. The site owners were later found innocent in court of flouting any applicable laws.
Naturally this produced a mass of media hype. And guess what? Tons of copycat sites sprung up to cater for the hordes of brand new cheap music downloaders, and the existing allofmp3 punters, all searching for an allofmp3 replacement. Some of these websites are excellent, some are average and some appalling. They all abide by the cheap mp3 download route, a few managing quality too.
But none have the whole package of the original. That’s not surprising as it would take a lot of work to set up and maintain a comparable website. Who would do that if they might be shut down without breaking the law?
allofmp3 RIP
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