more on Odd music industry silence regarding Russian web music merchant

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Bob Drzyzgula <bob () drzyzgula org>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 16:01:40 -0500
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] Odd music industry silence regarding Russian web music
merchant


Dave,

If you post this to IP, please delete my name.

FYI, I've been using Allofmp3 for a little more than
a year. I have to say that their service has been very
good. I'm on a sub-megabit SDSL line and generally have
gotten good throughput, although I usually use their
bandwith-limiting feature so as not to disrupt other
services on my line. When they gave advance notice of the
rate change early this year, they also gave a bit of a
bonus for those who added to their account balance during
that period. I took the opportunity to buy about 4GB --
$40 worth -- of high-quality MP3s before the rates went up.

The quality of the recordings has been excellent. They
give the customer a wide selection of format choices,
and most are encoded on demand, with whatever options
the customer wants -- even to the point of offering a
choice of encoding engines. If you want to load up your
IPOD with low or mid-grade bitrate material, you can get
just tons of songs for next to nothing. A typical, album
of under an hour costs around $1.50 to $2.20 at 192 kbps
at the new rates. On some material they let you buy the
unencoded CD datastream, although that clearly will cost
you a bunch more -- depending on the album it may be more
cost effective to buy the CD in the US. A small amount of
material is only available pre-encoded at a single bitrate.

It is so easy, the rates are so reasonable, and
the quality is so good that I have actually purchased
content that I already had on CD simply because it was
less hassle than encoding it myself.

The selection is a bit spotty, but I've been able to find
the bulk of what I've looked for. Most new popular music
is available, including stuff that's just hit the stores.
The entire Beatles back catalog is there, for example, and
pretty much everything from Miles Davis. Obscure artists
are hit or miss, as is classical -- don't count on finding
more than one or two recordings of your favorite symphony.

As for giving a Russian site my credit card number,
my strategy has been to use MBNA's "shop safe" service.
If you aren't familiar with it, they have a system whereby
you can log into their website and generate a new, unique
credit card number, with a credit limit and expiration
date set by you. Thereafter, the first company to post a
charge to that number is maintained as the *only* company
allowed to charge to that number; you need to generate a
new number for each payee.  With Media Services, I've found
that I need to call MBNA each time to verbally authorize
a Russian company to bill my account, but I don't have to
worry about my real cc number floating around Russia.

FWIW.

On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 03:06:04PM -0500, David Farber wrote:
> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Reply-To: <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 07:39:18 -0800
> To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Odd music industry silence regarding Russian web
> music merchant
>
> [Note:  This item comes from reader Steve Schear.  DLH]
>
> > From: Steve Schear <s.schear () comcast net>
> > Date: February 12, 2005 11:04:59 PM PST
> > To: dewayne () warpspeed com
> > Subject: Odd music industry silence regarding Russian web music
> > merchant
> >
> > Since November 2003 the web music merchant www.allofmp3.com, operated
> > by the Russian company Media Services, has been openly selling some of
> > the most popular western music at a fraction of the cost of widely
> > touted American sites, such as Apple's hugely successful iTunes,
> > Rhapsody, MusicMatch, Napster, Sony Connect. Clients can select from a
...

------ End of Forwarded Message


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