Day: April 25, 2006

AllofMP3.Com

At the same time that the record industry is trying to raise the cost of iTunes music, AllofMP3.Com continues to make semi-legal music buying a cinch with the release of its slick AllTunes.

AllofMP3.Com is a Russian site that has a quasi-legal status even in Russia — Russian authorities in the past have threatened to crack down on the business, but for now it seems to stay ahead of authorities thanks to some loopholes in Russian copyright law.

Essentially, AllofMP3.Com offers high quality downloads of the latest music without DRM and very cheaply ($2-$3/album for 336kbs MP3s — cheaper for lower quality). It then pays money to a Russian licensing bureau which the RIAA and other major recording organizations don’t recognize, so none of the money from the sales is actually making its way back to labels or artists, in case you care about such things.

It may take a lot longer for the rest of the world to catch up with Russia, but AllofMP3.Com represents the inevitable future where music is commoditized. Frankly, the site is a bit like crack for music fans since the low prices mean you’re likely to end up spending far more on AllofMP3.Com than on iTunes precisely because the prices are so low. At $2/album, why not buy a couple hundred albums?

The major criticism leveled at AllofMP3.Com is its exploitation of loose Russian copyright laws. In this it is very similar to one of the world’s other copyright renegades — the United States in the 19th century. The RIAA and others who complain about the site’s continued success have predecessors in Charles Dickens and other successful British authors who saw their works pirated in the United States where lax copyright laws didn’t grant foreign authors any rights to control the publication of their works (i.e., they were ripped of by American printers who didn’t bother to pay them royalties — a policy which the United States government promoted by high tariffs on imported books).

If music companies can try to get the U.S. legislature to make it legal to hack and/or destroy computers that may be engaged in file sharing, I’m not sure why music lovers shouldn’t enjoy the fruits of Russia’s equally odd copyright laws.

Advertising In Virtual Worlds?

This Australian Age article claiming that advertising in virtual worlds is taking off might be a little more believable if it weren’t centered mostly on Project Entropia, the Enron of MMORPGs.

When last we saw Project Entropia, it was claiming that a user paid $100,000 for a piece of in-game property, only it turned out the user was also a spokesman for the company. If you believe that was a legitimate sale, I’ve got a bridge in Azeroth you can have real cheap.

According to Australia Age,

The latest release of the game, created by MindArk PE AB of Sweden, features advertising billboards. Through a PowerPoint-like system, players created animated ads and buy time on the billboards.

So far, the ads have been promoting player-organized in-game events like fashion shows and hunting competitions, as well as businesses like stores and hunting grounds, said Marco Behrmann, MindArk’s [sic] directory of player relations.

Sometimes I think Project Entropia is a culture jamming project designed to see just how many gullible reporters and news organizations it can suck into reprinting its transparent self-promotion.

There’s also a passing mention of Second Life in the Age article, but no indication that advertising itself is especially lucrative in-game (though, obviously, some players in SL are making significant amounts of real-world money hawking their virtual wares).

Source:

Advertising takes off in virtual worlds. Australia Age, April 5, 2006.

Plaxo: We’ll Spam You Less!

Plaxo didn’t get it in 2004 and its recent announcement that it will scale back its spamming reveals it still doesn’t get it in 2006.

Plaxo earned a light of well-deserved scorn for the way it helped its users keep their contact information updated. Essentially after entering your contacts into Plaxo, the service would spam the contacts periodically with e-mails asking users to update their contact information with Plaxo.

And the big change Plaxo announced in March?

…as of a few weeks ago, you should start seeing fewer and fewer of these e-mails, as we’ve shifted our product functionality away from address book update.

Wow, you mean there wasn’t a market in getting people to spam their friends and co-workers? How shocking.

Anyway, notice that people will start seeing “fewer of these e-mails” not “none of these e-mails.” The relentless spam will march on, just in slightly diminished quantities.

The only good thing that Plaxo ever did was serve as a clueless filter. Aside from e-mailing me about this or that MLM scheme, nothing says “clueless” like “Plaxo user.”

Sources:

A Little Less In Your Inbox. Plaxo’s Personal Card (Plaxo Official Weblog), March 20, 2006.

Plaxo Scales Back Automatic E-Mail Feature. Associated Press, March 23, 2006.