Phil’s Diary - [Blog @ http://www.philsdiary.net/]
I don’t know if you’ve seen or even heard of AllOfMp3.com? In essence it’s another iTunes… but from Russia, and with that has two big differences. First the tunes aren’t DRM’d. At all. In fact there’s a massive choice of encoding formats, and bit rates. You choose. They encode. You download. No encryption keys… no restrictions. The downloading program will even ID3 tag mp3s for you, in your choice of formatting.
Secondly they charge a fraction of the price of iTunes. Over here, iTunes charge 79p for a track. Over on AllOf, 79p will buy you a whole album. And in even better twist, you don’t pay per song you pay per byte. So the shorter the track/album, the less you pay. So no worries about paying the same for a 50minute album as a 79minute compilation.
The system really is geared to giving users what they want, with a nice downloader program, and the flexibility to grab the tracks you want in a format that suits. As a user you can’t want much more.
And, if I had an account, I’m pretty sure I’d be happy to spend money, much more money on music, after all at about 1/10th the price of albums over here (and online, for some reason the online services charge much the same as a real CD, but with more restrictions), why not. It’s not like I’ll be gutted if I downloaded an ablum and didn’t really like it. Would the DRM mean I would swap with friends…? don’t be daft, not at that price, it’s easier for me to just pay the 80p and download my own copy of the album. For me it hits that “cheap enough to not think twice” level. I guess a bit like micro payments for reading webpages.
iTunes and all the other pay to download services really should take a leaf out of AllOf’s books… make it user centric and cheaper and people will quite possibly stop swapping and start buying. And buy more.
Now, AllOf seems to be slightly legally questionable (no, it’s not illegal as such, as Russia’s laws don’t cover it, and the government prosecutors as such have declined to prosecute), and I’m not sure the artists get a cut. But I’m hoping that it drives change through the industry and forces the rip-off merchants to drop their prices and centre things around us, the customers.
Posted by Phil on July 19, 2005 08:32 PM | Categories: Technology
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I'd be suspect of anything from a Russion site -- no telling if virus/worm/trojan is lurking inside those files.
East Europe/Russia is a great 'hacker hangout'.
...Rick...
Posted by: Rick Hellewell at July 22, 2005 11:23 PM
May not help much here. The two companies connecting people to the iternet (the phone monopoly and the cable monopoly) just signed an agreement with the local RIAA subdivision to block any site that offers downloads that the RIAA complains are violating it's DRM rules. Nowhere in the agreement is any mention about proving the violation nor about ways to lift the block (no preef needed to block aparently means there is no way to disprove).
Posted by: sjon at July 20, 2005 7:22 AM