AllOfMP3 Shut Down by Russian Government
Written by Ernesto on July 02, 2007AllOfMp3, the popular online music store, has been shut down by the Russian government. Pressure from the United States, and a refusal to enter the World Trade Organisation (WTO) convinced the Kremlin to take the website down for good.
Before the shutdown AllOfMP3 had nearly 6 million users who were able to download songs and albums for a fraction of the price from authorized alternatives such as the iTunes Store. MP3s were sold for $0.20 per song, or less.
AllOfMP3 has been a thorn in the side of the RIAA and the US government for years. Last year, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said that if Russia wants to join the WTO, they should shut down the pirate music website [AllOfMP3] that is robbing U.S. recording companies of sales.
In an interview with P2Pnet, the owners of AllOffMP3 later said that Schwab completely and deliberately mischaracterized AllofMP3, “it is irresponsible to use AllofMP3.com as a negotiating instrument in an attempt to extract concessions from Russia”, thay added. But now it seems like president Putin has some good news to tell Bush today, a mere coincidence of course.
It is not clear how effective the shutdown of AllOfMP3 will be. Most users will probably move to MP3sparks, a similar service with a similar setup, launched by the same company. This site is not illegal under Russian law because they use a different licensing model.
Last December the Danish ISP “Perspectiv” decided to block access to AllOfMP3 for all their users. In a response, The Pirate Bay, working together with the pro-piracy lobby Piratbyrån, decided to block all Perspektiv’s customers from accessing its site. Not long after that “Perspectiv” reconsidered their position, and their customers were allowed to access the online music store again.
My gut feeling says that these “grey market” MP3 sites are just another Hydra.
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Most users cannot log into MP3sparks with their allofMP3 account. You must transfer the aomp3 account to mp3s whenever it comes back online, probably as http://www.allofmp3.ru.
The aom3.org forums and songboom.com are excellent knowledgebases for what is going on here.
MP3Sparks.com = allofmp3.com
Name change, green theme, raised prices. Other than that, everything is the same.
Why would you *pay* allofmp3 for music, when the artists doesn’t see a dime or anything?
You might as well just use p2p to begin with.
Only difference is you don’t support the russian mafia.
its ironic that russia will shut down one its pay for music websites, but the entire russian internet is full of sites where music and movies are freely available. good thing to be able to read russian ;)
Shut down? Whatever. MP3 Sparks is still up. They just had to change their license from using ROMS to NP FAIR. More info here:
http://mindboosternoori.blogspot.com/
http://mp3sparks.org/
Hydra? That’s about right. There are at least 15 alternatives to AllOfMP3; most of them are reviewed here: http://www.songboom.com. You can even do a side-by-side comparison of them. Long live cheap music!
sad new
MP3sparks.com is now also shutdown as of today. FYI.
So, MP3Sparks.com is not online either. What happens to our balance? I had over $50.00 in there! How can I get it back? I tried to email them but my email was bounced back. Someone HELP!!!
So what happens to my account balance? I had over $50.00 in there. I tried to email someone at allofmp3.com but my email was sent back. HELP!!
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