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.