Allofmp3 tests the water again
The Russian music site known for selling many popular artists albums for next to nothing have released a new piece of software to help its patrons download music from their store. The people over at iTunes must be pissed off at the existence of this store which utilises a crazy Russian legal loophole meaning that it doesn’t have to pay pays a fraction of the amount to the artists for the downloads as say a full CD sale would. Now, however, Allofmp3 have named their new software “allTunesâ€?, a blatant rip on the iTunes name. Either AllofMp3 have legal balls of steel or they just know that within Russia they are virtually untouchable by any western idea of copyright and trademark law.
March 2nd, 2006 at 10:46 am
Just letting you know, AllofMP3 does pay royalties for the music they redistribute. Russian Copyright law states that a company that allows music downloads over the internet is to be viewed the same as a radio station, and can do so without the permission of the copyright owners as long as they pay royalties to a collecting society. The law also states that you cannot discriminate when licensing copyrights in Russia, which means the Russian Organization for Multimedia & Digital Systems has to charge AllofMP3 the same amount they would a radio station. ROMS turns most of this money back over to the artists.
Just a quick correction.
March 3rd, 2006 at 2:36 am
I stand corrected…
It is still a loophole which, quite blatantly (in that its aimed at the western market), undermines the western idea of how music can be distributed on the Internet i.e. with only the express licensing of the copyright holder. It gets my goat that’s all.
March 3rd, 2006 at 9:26 am
I’d much rather $0.10 a song goes directly to the artist than whatever piddly amount the artist versus the record company gets in the iTunes model. Not to say the artist gets any more in the allofmp3 model, but I would hardly hold the current state of western music distribution (electronic or otherwise) up as an economically virtuous ideal.
With the means of production (i.e. recording gear) and promotion (i.e. home desktop publishing) going mainstream, the media giants (Sony, BMG, University, blah blah blah) will have to start changing their strategies in order to survive. I, personally, can’t wait.
March 3rd, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Indeed this is very true. The model over here is weighted towards record companies, however, with thanks to the Internet it is possible now to create record-label-less ventures for the artists. Stuff like myspace really helps. Plus with tools such as Tunecore it is possible to sell your music within the virtual monopoly of iTunes without a record label.
I cant wait either.. In the UK we have seen 2 recent examples of the power of the Internet and how record labels have become almost useless.
Notably Nizlopi with their Christmas number one single “the JCB song� and secondly is the phenomenal growth of the Arctic Monkeys.
February 16th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
And recording songs played on the radio is different to downloading mp3 files in what way? The analogy comparing downloads to radio broadcasts is interesting. The difference between the two is convenience.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
The site is http://www.mp3sparks.com and you might want to blow $10 there before the RIAA goes nuts on the Russians. Then again, the Russian’s have a nuclear arsenal.
But once i find out that most russian mp3 site are cheaper than mp3sparks and allofmp3!
Top 20 russian mp3 stores http://mp3sparks-news.blogspot.com