"I don't see Russia entering the WTO with sites like Allofmp3.com up and running."

The popular Russian digital download website AllofMp3.com's acquittal isn't sitting too well with the U.S. government.

Should Allofmp3.com reappear, as the controversial online music store has promised, it likely will doom its country's chances of joining the World Trade Organization this year.

"We remain committed to helping Russia make it into the WTO," said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the U.S. Trade Representative, the group that negotiates International trade agreements on behalf of the nation. "In order to make that happen though, they have to honor the commitments that they've made especially in the area of intellectual property rights."

If that wasn't clear enough, Spicer was more direct here: "I don't see Russia entering the WTO with sites like Allofmp3.com up and running."

Video on Allofmp3 Aquittal

Allofmp3 Comeback?

Following the acquittal of Allofmp3.com in Russian courts, the most popular Russian music download site, wants to reopen for business.

AllofMP3.com said last week that its operators are working to restore users' account access, their ability to pay for more services and their ability to order music.

Although Mediaservices, the owner of Allofmp3.com, has been selling music through Mp3sparks.com and for some its top customers through MemphisMembers.com , Allofmp3.com has been down for sometime now.

Allofmp3.com Owner "Not Guilty"

This precedent will be encouraging to other Russian Music Sites:

A Russian court found the former boss of music download Web site www.allofmp3.com not guilty of breaching copyright on Wednesday in a case considered a crucial test of Russia's commitment to fighting piracy.

The allofmp3.com Web site angered Western music companies by undercutting the price of downloads in deals they said breached copyright law.

Denis Kvasov, head of MediaServices which owned the site, was put on trial after entertainment companies EMI Group Plc, NBC Universal and Time Warner Inc. pressed for a prosecution.

"The prosecution did not succeed in presenting persuasive evidence of his involvement in infringing copyright law," said judge Yekaterina Sharapova.

A local official with the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which is representing copyright holders in the case, said it would appeal the decision.

"We are disappointed with the verdict and will appeal," IFPI regional director Igor Pozhitkov told reporters.

The site has been a thorny issue in negotiations between Russia and the United States over Russia's accession to the World Trade Organisation, a key aim of President Vladimir Putin.

At the beginning of the year global credit card companies stopped allowing customers to pay allofmp3.com for music downloads and by July the Web site had quietly closed down.

Kvasov always said he was within the law because the site paid part of its income to ROMS, a Russian organisation which collects and distributes fees for copyright holders.

The judge agreed with his defence.

"Everybody who uses soundtracks has to pay a certain amount of their income to the rights holders and this company has done that," she said. "MediaServices has paid a certain amount of money to ROMS."

At the height of its popularity allofmp3.com attracted millions of bargain-hunting music lovers across the world. It would typically sell the world's most popular tracks at a huge discount to U.S. competitors.

Russian marketplaces and underground passes are full of cheap copies of music and film on DVDs and Russia's government has been accused of being too lax on protecting intellectual property rights, a basic principle of WTO membership.

But in July Russia's top negotiator on WTO entry said he thought a deal would be ready by the end of the year.

Although allofmp3.com has disappeared, another Russia-based discount music Web site has since emerged -- www.mp3sparks.com, also owned by MediaServices.

Allofmp3.com shutdown, Mp3sparks still up

It looks like allofmp3.com has finally been closed down. Almost.

The embattled online music store appears to have quietly lost its battle for survival just in time for Putin's two-day visit to Kennebunkport, Maine.

The web site has long been a thorn in relations, and U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab sharply warned last fall that it had to be closed before Russia could join the World Trade Organization.

Early last month, most online music stores registered by MediaServices, the owner of AllofMP3.com, became inaccessible to their millions of clients. AllofMP3.com itself would not load Sunday, while visitors to AllofMP3.ru, a mirror site, were greeted with a no-entry sign and a note saying, "We are sorry but the server is closed for maintenance."

Not that this will change much as allofmp3 has prepared for the closure of its domain, creating a rather familiar sister site called Mp3sparks (mp3sparks.com.) Wikipedia has all the details:

In late April 2007, two apparent sister sites of AllOfMP3 emerged. MP3Sparks, and MemphisMembers. Both sites use a layout and feel that is similar to the original AllOfMP3 website, and both are owned and operated by the same company that runs AllofMP3.com^{[citation needed]}.

MP3Sparks is a virtual clone of AllofMP3 with a few options changed and different colors. The site is licensed by the Rightholders Federation for Collective Copyright Management of Works Used Interactively(NP-FAIR), instead of by the Russian Organization for Multimedia and Digital Systems (ROMS). This is a key difference as it gives them legitimacy in the eyes of their payment processors Chronopay and E-Centru.

MP3Sparks users are theoretically able to fund their account via VISA, MasterCard and other credit cards without restriction{{Fact|date=June 2007}). This is quite true for some, while others still get the familiar message that credit card transactions are not available at the moment. This differing behavior has now been determined to be based on the IP that the user contacting MP3Sparks is coming from. Some IPs are blocked, for whatever reason. This has been shown to be the case because users who find that they cannot pay on MP3Sparks from their own IP addresses, often CAN pay when they use some form of proxy server which changes their IP to one from somewhere else.

Some AllOfMP3 users have reported receiving an invitation to MP3Sparks seemingly at random when viewing their balance screen. If the invitation is accepted, that member's history, balance and status is deleted immediately from the AllofMP3 website and is transferred over to MP3Sparks website.

Unlike MP3Sparks, Memphis Members is reserved for those individuals that have been high money spenders on either AllofMP3. Using a look that's similar to the classic AllofMP3 layout, it allows members to have more options than the standard invited member as well as being able to fund more money to their accounts in $25, $50, and $100 increments (in comparison to the default $10, $15, $25 and $50 increments on AllofMP3, and $10, $15, $25 increments available on MP3Sparks.) Memphis Members are given their own link to the semi-stealth website (hxxp://username.memphismembers.com) which they can use to access the site whenever they choose. When a person who is not a member of the Memphis Members website tries to access this page, they are greeted with a blank page that contains the words "nothing here." While there has been rumors of the Memphis Members website being linked to credit card information being resold (unbeknownst to the owner) on the black market for use in credit card fraud overseas, none of those claims have been substantiated as being true. It is suspected that these are actually rumors being floated by the IFPI and the RIAA to scare off potential members.

It has been reported in previous versions of this article that MP3Sparks is an entryway for users to become Memphis Members and that they will be sent invitations when they have spent $300. This is incorrect. In fact the administrators of Media Services have told people inquiring that they will not consider MP3Sparks users for MemphisMembers because they "already can pay." MemphisMembers seems to be reserved for current long time AllofMP3 users who have spent in excess of $300 on the site.

With the potential (not at all impending) closure of the AllofMP3 website during the summer of 2007, many people feel that these are shrewd business moves by MediaServices, Inc. (the parent company of AllofMP3) to stay in business and run under the radar of the Recording Industry Association of America, one of the major driving forces responsible for the crippling and destruction of AllofMP3.com. Whether or not the RIAA will take further action against MediaServices for their actions is unknown at this time.

For those counting, I believe this is at least the 11th time "Allofmp3 has been gone for good." While their name may be permanently gone, their services are up and running.

Chrono Wants Russian Music Sites To Obtain License

Chronopay, the payments services provider of 95% of the Russian Music Sites, wants the sites to get a license from Russia's copyright authorities.

"Industry experts, however, sound skeptical of this initiative. “The Federation is no different from the Multimedia and Digital Networks Society – it also has nothing to do with rightholders,” Igor Pozhitkov, head of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s Russian office

Russia's music copyright laws are puzzling...

Free Russian Music Sites

I have just added a ton of free Russian Music Sites to my Squidoo Lens. In addition to the slightly more legitimate Russian sites that charge, there are a lot of these free mp3 download sites that, I guess, sell advertising to stay in business. I'm not sure how much longer they'll last...

I added them without investigating each and every site, so some of them might not work and might not even be free. I found about most of them from a post on a Russian blog. If you use them, please comment on the lens or forum. And if you find any good sites, then please add them (if they aren't already there) to my plexo (digg-like-thing) on my lens. Most of the sites are only in Russian and are hard to navigate. I'm not sure if they're in fact better options to torrents, file-sharing, etc. Help me find the useful ones.

Allofmp3 "Shutdown" Dates

An incomplete history of times when Allofmp3 was thought be doomed.

Feb 22, 2005: "Russian music site targeted by law enforcement"
May 15, 2006: "Allofmp3 Down - For Good?"
May 30, 2006: "Allofmp3.com running out of time?"
Jul 3, 2006: "BPI gets go-ahead to sue MP3 Site"
Aug 18, 2006: "AllofMp3 suffers mysterious downtime"
Oct 19, 2006: "Credit card firms cut off Allofmp3"
Sept 15, 2006: "Anti-piracy law could shut down Russian music download site"
Nov 28, 2006: "Russia Agrees To US Request To Shut Down AllofMP3"
Dec 21, 2006: "Allofmp3 sued for 1.65 Trillion"
Feb 2, 2007: "Russia to legalize digital content market"

Pretty resilient. But how long will it last? The Nov 28 and Feb 2 articles may actually signal the end.

No One Steals 45s

In my post, titled 'How to stop music "stealing" ?', I received two comments:

1) "I don't consider paying for music as stealing"
2) "its legal according to Berne convention administered by the WIPO and WTO requirements."

These responses miss the point of my post. There are moral and legal reasons that obtaining music from Russian entrepreneurs shouldn't be considered stealing. I wasn't arguing whether downloading music from the Russian sites or file-sharing networks is good or bad or even against the law. (I had the word stealing in quotes.)

I was arguing that the music industry could compete more effectively with the Russian Music Sites and file sharing by improving their service. Instead of focusing on threatening the file-sharers with legal trouble, they should give the file-sharers a reason not to use other people’s services.

I wrote:
“1) Online music stores can attach almost everything they want to downloads. Album or song purchases should be attached to tour schedules, artist stories and biographies, videos, games, screensavers, drawings, desktop backgrounds, coupons, anything of interest.

2) Songs files can be made for more than listening. Fans like to interact with their music. What if you could download a song file, and then sing karaoke with it, play the guitar solo from it in Guitar Hero, dance to it in DDR, create your own music video for it, remix it and resell your reproductions. All of these abilities in a single interface.”

The record industry targets file-sharers and the Russian sites because they view them as a threat to their business. But I believe they are making a mistake in allowing their legal team to be their main tool against people swapping tunes. They can and should redefine what selling music means, and produce something that cannot be found elsewhere.

Currently, the record industry offers a worse experience than their Russians competitors. They continue to act as if the Internet is a threat, when it’s really an opportunity.

June 1, 2007 Deadline for Allofmp3 Shutdown

Update: I replaced inaccurate info about March 15 deadline with accurate info about June 1 deadline.

"The agreement is dated November 19 and posted to the Web site for the Office of the United States Trade Representative. It summarizes the joint efforts of the two countries to fight content piracy, an issue known to be centered in Russia and Eastern Europe.

“This agreement sets the stage for further progress on IPR issues in Russia through the next phase of multilateral negotiations, during which the United States and other WTO members will examine Russia’s IPR regime,” states the document.

The document specifically names AllofMP3.com as an example of the types of Web sites that they will shut down. We contacted AllofMP3.com and the company sent us an official statement stating their legality. It says that the company has offered to remove illegal music at the copyright holders’ requests." TechCrunch

The U.S. pressure on Russian authorities to target Allofmp3.com appears to be working. I'm no Russian legal expert, and I have absolutely no clue how this will proceed, but it really doesn't matter. At this point, it's almost impossible to load money onto Allofmp3. The question is, if the Russians shutdown Allofmp3, what will happen to the other Russian music sites?

No matter, there are still the Ukranian Sites:
http://www.mp3city.com.ua/
http://mclub.te.net.ua/
http://www.mp3.ua/
Allofmp3 may even join them.

New Forum

On my blog and Squidoo lens, discussion is challenging. So, I've created a Russian Mp3 Sites Forum.

What's the deal with Xrost

To load money onto Allofmp3.com, it used to be:
1) Go to http://www.xrost.biz and put money on a card
2) Go to http://account.allofmp3.com/pays/payments.shtml?action=step2&via=xrost
Login and Deposit.

But this message has been up on Xrost.biz for much longer than 48 hours:

" Dear valued customer,

As part of our ongoing effort to improve the payment platform, we will be performing a scheduled server maintenance. The payment option at our site will be restored in 48 hours.

Sincerely, Xrost Team "

Without Xrost, it's hard to load money onto Allofmp3. There are plenty of other Russian Mp3 sites that allow you can use a credit card, but I hope they return.

Anyone know what's going on?

AlloffMp3.org: Great DJ resource

Update: Alloffmp3.org songs are only 192 Kbs, too low quality for most DJs.

After reading this review below, I searched alloffmp3.org for a few obscure artists and I was amazed at the depth of their selection. There is content on alloffmp3.org that cannot be found anywhere else. I received this comment in response to an earlier post and I'm reposting it in its entirety.

DJ Ross Lloyd (UK) said...

Hi there, I was looking around for some mp3s and found them on alloffmp3.org. I signed up paid my money and when I tried to download it came back with an error saying there was a problem. My immediate thought was that I had be swizzed.

HOWEVER, I later received an email from the service saying there had indeed been a problem and that all had been resolved.

In the meantime I had found your blog while I was looking to see if anyone else was sharing my experiences.

So I logged back in and true to their word the service was up and running so I was happy.

About the service. I am a club DJ and am alway on the look out for the latest tunes and i have been absolutely blown away by what I have found on this site.

Tunes that I can't buy anywhere online or sometimes find in the shops. Even things which to my knowledge are only knocking around on vinyl. This sounds like a blatant advert (which it most definitely is not) but last night I was like a kid in candy shop and managed to find about 85% of all the sought after tracks I have been looking for over the last month.

The search facility is pretty crappy and browsing is not really much of an option. If you know the artists you are looking for, or the exact name of the track you want then this site is great.

They also have a few lists of the latest UK and US charts etc but these don't really demonstrate the depth of what the site seems to have available.

I did find a couple of links which seemed not to work and the interface can get a bit hung up 'encoding' these files but this happened twice out of about 15 downloads.

The listening interface works well and they have adopted a fast-forwarding approach in the sample which will play about 10 seconds fast forward a bit, play some more and so on. This is very helpful, I am always a bit frustrated when the 30 second sample you get on some other site seems to miss out the best or worst parts of the music.

So over all: not that user friendly, found downloads a bit slow, they seem to max out at about 50kbps on my system. I am used to 100-200kbps on some other sites.

This site is all about its content and having used a lot of the mp3 sites I am very happy to have found this one which seems to cater for my particular (non mainstream) tastes really rather well.

Beatles Pick AllofMp3.com over iTunes (Satire)

"It's like the President's daughter announcing she will marry Osama Bin Laden." Says RIAA lawyer Hugh Billings. "Allofmp3.com is an outlaw organization with links to organized crime and possible terrorist groups. More importantly, Allofmp3.com doesn't pay any royalties to RIAA members for the use of their copyright materials. Giving Allofmp3.com control of the must lucrative music franchise in history is a mistake, a very big mistake."
Link

Webmoney, more available to Europeans

I have never used WebMoney, but they seem to be a good option for people that don't want to pay with a credit card . If you've used them, please comment.

I received this email about WebMoney.
"My name is Natalia, I’m PR-manager in Web Money Transfer. We find your lens about Russian mp3 sites (http://www.squidoo.com/russianmp3sites/). You see that more of them accepting WebMoney as payment tool. And now our system became more available to europeans: they can top-up WM account using paysafesard (www.paysafecard.com) or UKash (www.ukash.com) prepaid cards in almost all European countries.
So now one can fast add funds to the WM-purse in euro and buy music without complicated identification and sharing the credit card details."

General details on company from wikipedia:
"WebMoney is an electronic money and online payment system (transactions are conducted through WebMoney Transfer). It was founded in 1998 in Russia, and originally targeted mainly Russian clients, but is now used world-wide. The company claims to have more than 2 million users.
Clients can use the system through downloaded software called "WM Keeper" or through a limited web client called "WM Keeper light". Signing up and receiving webmoney (known as "WM units") from other users is free; sending WM units to other accounts incurs a fee of 0.8%. Funds can be deposited into or withdrawn from webmoney accounts by money order, wire transfer, by conversion from other electronic currencies, or by cash transactions at authorized exchange offices; all of these incur various fees. It is also possible to purchase WM cards for $10-$100 in order to fund an account.
WebMoney transactions are safe because they do not require a credit card or bank account and immune against certain scams because they are final and cannot be retracted; this is similar to e-gold and cash and unlike credit card transactions and PayPal. It is therefore not possible to buy WM units online with a mere credit card or a paypal account.
Every account, known as a "purse", is run in US Dollar-equivalents (WMZ), ruble-equivalents (WMR), euro-equivalents (WME) or hryvnia-equivalents (WMU). Accounts are identified by strings called WM-IDs; account holders can remain completely anonymous towards each other.
WebMoney incorporates an instant messaging system as well as a way to send out bills and to extend credit. It is also possible to protect a payment with a password; the payment is withdrawn from the payer's account and added to the payee's account, but cannot be redeemed unless the password is known. The payer will typically provide the password once the promised goods have been delivered. Some operations require a higher level of user authentication known as a "WM passport" which a user can obtain from authorized parties."

Allofmp3 Moving to Ukraine?

"The first thing I did was to look up their IP-location. It used to be in downtown Moscow but now they're situated just a few miles north of The Black Sea (nicer climate I bet) in a Ukrainian town called Mykolayiv (population approximately 500.000)."
From Warez.com

This could subdue legal issues for a while.

Russian Tycoon to make AllofMp3.com Legal

AllofMp3.com is by far the most popular Russian Mp3 Site and also has by far faced the most scrutiny. Although their legal status is ambiguous, they offer a wonderful product—DRM free music files in almost any format and of almost any quality.

From Electronista,
"Online music store AllOfMP3 maybe subverted through a corporate buyout, according to a report today by the research firm Music Ally. The analysts indicate that an as yet unnamed "influential and wealthy" Russian tycoon has been pursuing the direct download shop and intends to legitimize its often questionable licensing scheme by taking control of the company. The businessman is working on behalf of music labels and publishers that believe AllOfMP3's extremely low-priced downloads skirt the edges of its home territory's law, Music Ally's researchers claim. If successful, the takeover would be followed by new licensing deals obtained directly from the labels themselves."

Since they already have a sophisticated infrastructure for selling music files in place, AllofMp3 could turn into a nice indie music store, but its sketchy past might make getting any licensing deals awfully hard. I find it hard to believe that AllofMp3.com will be able negotiate a deal with the RIAA, who has sued them for 1.65 trillion in America. If they go "legal", Allofmp3.com will probably only sell music from independent labels (unless they too want money for music Allofmp3 has sold).

How to stop music "stealing" ?

Long ago here's how it happened. Buy an album, put it in, and groove to your new treat. And as your sitting on that comfy sofa, listening to those booming speakers unleash fresh tunes, you skim the liner notes. It's simple, a standard music junkie experience.

And now with online music stores, what do we have? The same experience. Some, such as iTunes, are even beginning to offer digital music booklets, a newer version of liner notes. But why stop there?

1) Online music stores can attach almost everything they want to downloads. Album or song purchases should be attached to tour schedules, artist stories and biographies, videos, games, screensavers, drawings, desktop backgrounds, coupons, anything of interest.

2) Songs files can be made for more than listening. Fans like to interact with their music. What if you could download a song file, and then sing karaoke with it, play the guitar solo from it in Guitar Hero, dance to it in DDR, create your own music video for it, remix it and resell your reproductions. All of these abilities in a single interface.

If an album offered more attachments and interactivity in a hard to reproduce environment, than fans would gravitate from "stealing" towards the superior product. Many people who download newly released movies still go to theaters for the experience—it's better.

The record companies can improve the music experience or they can spend their time catching clueless teenagers. Which do you think deserves more emphasis?

I received this email on my Squidoo Lens from someone who claims to be an Alloffmp3 user. I'm am naturally suspicious of websites like Alloffmp3.org and allofmp3-i.com because they are obvious attempts to capture traffic intended for Allofmp3.com. Despite a misleading domain name, I have marked them as reliable on my lens because users suggested them and I really have no way to verify whether a user is truthful or not.

Considering all users credible is perhaps a bad policy but, if you pay any of the sites, the websites probably will let you download mp3s, as one user who gets scammed will severely hurt their business. The cost of the domain, hosting, and web design are probably not worth scamming a few customers. So I think that, except for a few mistakes here and there, most of the Russian Mp3 Sites can be considered reliable in the sense that if you pay for it,
you will receive your desired mp3. The confirmation of a site's reliability by customers on my Squidoo lens is required mainly to foster discussion about the sites and to hear about bad experiences. Even if someone who works for one of the sites gets me to call their site reliable, chances are it actually is reliable.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to make of this email; is it an honest review or a company promotion? It looks to me that it is written by someone who learned english as second language, but they do give real praise and criticism. If this is from a company promoter, I'd much prefer it if you contacted me through my lens and provided information about your company, instead of writing fake emails. Otherwise, I apologize to Nick or whoever sent the email, unless of course the email really did come from George W. Bush, who has much more important things to be doing.

"Thanks for this page, I have just given allOFFmp3.org a go, and I am fairly impressed.

The payment options from the money bunch were a little confusing, but I could pay without extra charges with a visa card. I went for $20 credit, an it was available instantly.

Prices seem somewhat random, length is generally a factor, but it still seems a bit hit and miss. Albums with a lot of longish tracks, (say 10 x 6 minuters) can work out a lot more expensive than the same amount of time in one chunk).

They seem rather weak on stuff like modern american bluegrass, but have a VERY impressive range of modern electronic, (Berlin School and others).

The web site is nothing like as easy to use as "all OF mp3", and there is no download manager, but it works. In short, a few rough edges and inconsistent pricing, but lots of stuff that "all of" does not stock. I'll be getting more!" --Nick <president@whitehouse.gov>

It begins.

I've always been fascinated with the Russian Mp3 sites. Through a combination Russian loopholes and lack of enforcement, they are able to transparently sell Mp3s at a much lower price than their American competitors. But not only do they sell Mp3s for low prices, but they also design websites and clients (especially Allofmp3.com) that rival or are perhaps superior to those that are RIAA approved. They demonstrate what can be done without restrictions, no DRM, different file types and qualities, longer (or full) previews, generous bonuses, and innovative pricing structures.

Now, a restriction free music world is frightening to artists and record companies. They lose control of what becomes of their work; they lose profit models; they lose their whole current infrastructure. An industrial revolution is fun for the consumers, but content owners aren't quite ready for radical change.

It is my understanding that the Russian Websites donate some of their profits to a pool for rights-holders, who could claim money for their works, but by doing so would legitimize the sale of their works. Thus, not much money (if any) goes to rights-holders from the Russian Sites and the music industry. The RIAA obviously isn't happy about their existence and with the new U.S. trade agreement with Russia, I find it hard to believe that these Russian Mp3 Sites will be able to continue to operate effectively, if it all, for the next couple years. The credit card companies have already made it harder to pay Allofmp3.com. You currently can only pay Allofmp3 by going through XROST, a third party. Yet, until then, it will be very interesting to follow the websites. There are at least 20 of them.