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I want my M.P.3.

Just when I thought the ranting was over I see this article on Cnet’s news.com which states that my favorite online music store, allofmp3.com, is being investigated by local police. Bummer for them, and I the consumer.

Allofmp3.com is a Russian online music store which sells music without DRM (Digital Restrictions Management). If you read yesterday’s post you would understand how much I dislike DRM. They offer music in a variety of open formats, compatible with all operating systems and portable music players, and the quality surpasses that of the US based stores like itunes.com. So far so good eh? Well, it gets better. Allofmp3.com is based in Russia and therefore deals in their nation’s currency, the Ruble. I don’t know if your big on economics but the exchange rate between US Dollars and Russian Rubles is pretty good. As an example, I just spent $25 USD on their site, which comes out to about 695.78 RUR. That’s going to buy a lot of music. Another thing going good for the consumer is that you pay for the music by the megabyte, rather than per track. This way I can choose to pay a little more for a better quality song, or a little less for a less quality song. So far I’ve been getting mostly 192Kbps MP3 files which, to me, sound just as good as the CD. After the currency conversion the prices come out to about US $0.02 per MB. Estimating a 5MB song, that’s about ten cents a track, or one tenth what the US online music stores are charging.

So by now your thinking this is totally non-legit. To tell you the truth until this investigation proves anything it’s up for grabs, but I do know this… Corporations have played the globalization card forever, now it’s our turn. Nike can buy materials from other countries cheaper than in the US, or manufacture goods over seas. This is just the flip side, and of course they don’t quite like it when we can buy for less in other countries. Purchasing a CD online from Russia is akin to flying over there, buying the album, and returning to the states, except without the overhead. And I don’t feel bad about using the service because it doesn’t take a hundred under paid children in a sweatshop to produce an MP3 file. In fact, this company is good for Russia’s economy, bringing the country high-tech jobs.

What about copyrights? Good question and I believe that’s what this investigation is about. Allofmp3.com claims that it has paid the proper royalties to the artists to sell the songs, however, from what I understand the way Russian copyright work with imports like this is that they only need to pay the artist, and not the record company. Score one for me, I’m really not a big fan of the RIAA. I could care less if Sony or Universal gets my dime, but to know that U2 and Duran Duran are getting real money form my downloads makes me happy. Its like buying a t-shirt at the concert, the only real money that goes to the artists. It’s a shame the way the record industry exploits artists and this is just my little digital way of biting my thumb at them.

So I’m just some anti-American, international import right exploiting, commie right? Not quite. Seriously I just choose to buy from the better company, and if that company just so happens to be in Russia so be it. You don’t see anyone pissing and moaning about buying a Huffy bicycle even though all their manufacturing is done in Mexico. When you compare the US based online music stores and those over seas you’ll notice that the stores in the states offer less quality music files, with digital restrictions, and at a much higher cost because they have to pay the evil middle man called the RIAA. Prices would be just as cheap over here if musicians would sell directly to the distributor like Apple, and not go through the evil middle man. But then again how could a budding new artist get any air play on the radio when just about every FM station is controlled by Clear channel, and thus the RIAA.

So I guess I’ll continue watching this case. I could go on and on but I’ve got a lot of shopping to do.

Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free