Steve Jobs and Apple have dragged the music industry into the 21st century — screaming and kicking. It ha been amazing to see how record company executives have completely failed to see the potential of online music downloads.

Think about it: Here is a technology that potentially lets you sell your whole back catalogue without all the costs connected with packaging, transport and distribution. Sure, you need some heavy Internet servers, but still, compared to printing CD covers and packing jewel cases, this is peanuts.

But no, the record companies still believe that our ability to rip MP3 or AAC files for our friends will make record sales drop.

Question: Did our ability to make our own music cassette compilations stop us from buying records?

We all know the result of this way of thinking: Users starts using all kinds of peer to peer networks, downloading music files without paying for them.

The Apple iTunes Music Store, a revolution!

Because of this the importance of the Apple iTunes Music Store can’t be overrated.

Jobs & Co have proved once and for all that the future of the music industry lays online. You can sell music files with a great profit. Yes, downloading may eventually replace the CD, but the record companies will not loose in the process.

But is the iTunes Music Store any good? We have two iPods at home, and no less than three Macs, and we have used the iTunes program quite extensively.

It works very well indeed. You click on the Music Store icon, and enter your search term in the upper right hand corner. If iTunes have the tune or artist it will be listed.

You then click on the download button for the song or album your looking for, enter your account password and the music is automatically downloaded to your iTunes library.

We have some 300 “Apple songs” in our collection.

The weakness of the Apple Music Store

However, the Apple Music store has two major disadvantages.

First, the songs you buy are coded in a proprietary file format. It is based on the open AAC format (in essence “MP4? files/MPEG4). However,
Apple’s FairPlay Digital rights management (DRM) limits the number of CD burns of playlists, and the number of computers that can play the files.

This is obviously an attempt to placate the record industry, but may also be an attempt to stop the distribution of too many copies of iTunes Music Store files — i.e. Apple is starting to think like the record companies.

In any case, it is a nuisance, as it limits your ability to burn CD copies and compilations.

Secondly, the sound quality is not optimal. It is good enough for regular iPod ear-buds, but as soon as you start playing these files through high quality ear phones or a proper stereo, the sound is flat.

While you may select a higher quality when ripping your own CDs in iTunes (e.g. 192 kbps AAC), you can’t select a higher bit rate in the Music Store.

The ideal online music store

Obviously our ideal music store would give us the same advantages as buying a regular CD and ripping it in iTunes (or any other music file program): The files should not be copy protected and we should be able to select file variants with a better sound quality.

The alternatives of the music industry is not good enough in this respect. As the Wikipedia puts it:

Universal Music Group and Sony teamed up with a service called Duet, later renamed PressPlay [now integrated in the new Napster]. EMI, AOL/Time Warner and BMG teamed up with MusicNet [now a service that deliver files to other music store, like Y!Music]. Again, both services struggled, hampered by high prices and heavy limitations on how downloaded files could be used once paid for. In the end, consumers chose instead to flock to the free file sharing programs, which were far more convenient to use and free to boot.

The Yahoo Music Store has a complicated system of copy rules and payments, and the files cannot be played on an iPod. That one is clearly not an option!

The Russians to the rescue?

When complaining about all this hassle to one of our friends, he pointed us to the AllofMP3.com site.

We took a look and was immediately impressed.

Yes, here is a site that let’s us decide on the sampling rate (i.e. sound quality of files). We can also select which format to download: MP3 , AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and Musepack.

And yes, there is no copyright protection. When the file has been downloaded, we decide what we do with it, as we would have with a file ripped from one of our own CDs.

The web store interface is easy to read, the search engine is good, and there is enough information on the various tracks to make a record buyer happy. There is even a Amazon-like “if you like this song, you might also want to listen to these artist” kind of feature.

The downloading of files is a bit cumbersome on a Mac, as you have to download every single track of an album separately. PC users may, however, make use of the “allTunes” Windows software, which makes this process painless.

(Yeah, we noticed the similarity with the iTunes name as well.)

Add to this some very friendly pricing (AllofMP3 charges for the volume of data downloaded, not for individual songs — all in all some 1 cent per MB), and it seems we are looking at a winner.

Too good to be true?

Hm. We wondered… Isn’t this too good to be true? How on earth can AllofMP3 present the latest albums by Shakira, the Pet Shop Boys or Coldplay in this manner, when the record companies hate these kind of services?

The record companies managed to close down the first edition of Napster and fought Steve Jobs and Apple all the way. Why on earth should they tolerate an iTunes killer of this sort?

Or to put it more bluntly: Is AllofMP3 legal?

This is where it gets tricky, and the reader (and any record company representatives subscribing to our newsletter) should note that we are not legal experts, nor do we know much about international intellectual property law.

It turns out that AllofMP3 has an agreement with the Russian Copyright Society in the same way as Russian radio stations have. AllofMP3 therefore claims that the service is legal — at least in Russia.

This hasn’t stopped the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) from trying to close it down.

Whether it is legal outside Russia is probably depending on local laws and regulations. Vadim Medvedev of AllofMP3 says to Museeker that:

“We are aware of the fact that uploading tracks may be illegal according to the laws in the country of the customer. That is entirely his own responsibility. Allofmp3 is allowed to use these tracks for our service according to Russian legislation as long as we pay the copyrights to ROMS.”

The Wikipedia has a detailed presentation of the arguments raised for the US. We get dizzy just trying to read those paragraphs. This legal ambiguity is why we cannot recommend AllofMP3 as an alternative too iTunes at the moment.

AllofMP3 weaknesses

Is the AllofMP3.com site a product of the Russian Mafia, another attempt at white-washing drug money? We have no reason to believe so, but from an international intellectual property law perspective this is definitely a borderline activity.

According to the Wikiepedia there have been a few unverifiable reports of some users having their credit cards used fraudulently after using the allofmp3.com service. However, many users have paid AllofMP3 a lot by credit card directly and reported no suspicious activity. Our friend has had no problems.

We have heard of technical glitches, but users have apparently got their money refunded to their AllofMP3 accounts when facing download problems.

The site may also be a little slow, as it often codes your files after you have ordered them. The site is clearly popular, and is regularly “down for maintenance”. In spite of this, however, our friend is very happy with the service, and the last time we discussed this with him he was not loosing sleep over legalities.

(You do not believe that this friend exists, do you He certainly does, and is heavily into 1970’s disco and Indian Bollywood music…)

A model for the music industry

AllofMP3s pricing is ridiculously low, and the artists and the record companies do in no way get back what they deserve for their efforts in our opinion.

Apple has proven that people are willing to pay a dollar, a pound or a euro to download a song. We would be willing to pay more to get files of the quality AllofMP3 is offering.

In other words: If the record industry could get beyond their fear of illegal copying (this is a battle you cannot win, guys!) an international service following the lead of AllofMP3 could become a great success, and would probably bring in a lot of money. For the time being their attitude is producing Russian millionaires.

Free MP3 file from Pandia

Given that you have read through the whole article, we think you deserve a reward.

Click on the link below to download a brand new MP3 file by the Norwegian pop/electronica project Sandstone.

And yes, it is definitely legal, as we own the copyright.

Listen to Sandstone: The City that Never Was (Free MP3 file, 3 MB, right click to download)

See also:
Russian police probe cheap downloads site (The Register)
Online music stores (Wikipedia)
Barely Legal — The hottest trend in file sharing. (The Slate)
AllOfMP3 Launches allTunes (TechCrunch)
AllofMP3.com (review by TechGuide)
Museekster AllofMP3 FAQ
Interview with Vadim Medvedev, content manager of Allofmp3 (Museekster)