I have used All Flac.com for at least 9 months now. By that I mean I made a one-time deposit of funds and 2 downloads, and still have a little bit of funds remaining. I have learned 3 things since giving them my credit card information spring 2011:
1) All Flac.com is not affiliated with any recording industry or copyright holders entity. Therefore artists are not compensated for the purchased music there. Really, at those prices? If it's too good to be true, it probably . . .
2) My credit card has not been used for any nefarious or stolen uses. A third party company actually collects and receives your credit card information at the time I purchased my blocks of payment. To the best of my knowledge, All Flac.com never has my/ or other account holder's credit card information after making a payment in exchange for files. The third party notifies AllFlac that a payment has been made, and a confirmation # is sent to them with your login information.
3) All Flac.com crashes and goes down frequently. Yes, I was alarmed and thought I lost my remaining funds too. Nobody from support ever responded to my emails, nor anybody from their third-party funds collecting body responded when I sent a request for information to the merchant through their complaints department. I didn't check back for over a month without a reply. However when the site came back up, my account still showed credits I paid were available. Also, when my backup hard drive failed (3.5 year old LaCie 1 TB USB 2.0 / FireWire 400 / eSATA - Triple Interface Design by Neil Poulton model), it failed December 5, 2011, I was allowed to download previously charged music selections without being charged again.
Yeah, I was disappointed myself. Just yesterday I picked out what I was going to download with the remaining credit I had, and then I fell asleep, woke up, and can't get the rest of my DLs, and no telling with so many dodgy companies leaving .com verisign top level domains in the coming days, if they will be back. Oh well, it was a paltry sum, lesson learned if so. One should be more careful when living out their End of Life illness on Social Security Disability Income, even with all the money I paid into Social Security, my monthly stipend couldn't keep a homeless person in cigarettes and coffee. Where I live homeless actually get free food from several churches, family kitchens, and charities the community gives generously to, even during this economic depression. Plus they get close to $150 - $300 in food stamps on top of that, and many hungry families will buy their monthly accounts (debit cards rather than old paper food stamps, need the card and pin #) for coins on the dollar. I know, after blowing through nearly $150,000.00 in IRA account, savings, profit sharing, and a little credit debt while waiting for approval into the disability program, a little over 3 years, I was evicted, sold everything I owned except for a few things I put in storage, and was homeless for about 6 months, before I moved into a housing program where I was one of the last people approved solely based on eligibility alone, before it was forced to be turned into a complete lottery system to fairly distribute housing vouchers that weren't enough to go around to all that needed them (they still have to be eligible of course, just not enough to go around after the pre-depression recession started here in 2003). And my community was one of the top 10 best cities in the U.S.A. and several times major U.S. finance and social magazines put in Top 3 to Top 10 best places to live, raise a child, during the last decade. Now less than 7 years later, our schools are some of the worst in the country.
I became suspicious when the files were packed and transmitted the same way a "scene" or "warez" flac file is done, FLAC, APE, WAVEPACK, WAV, image or individual tracks, .cue, EAC log files, some with Audiochecker logs, and inner folders with hi-res scans of the CD/LP artwork. I think some had .nfo files, unsure 100% about if some had the .nfo files, but those are only found in scene/warez downloads.
FWIW: I was doing searches last week, and found a U.S. Hi-Res digital download site that was beginning to make it's online digital downloads available in lossless formats, 16 bit, and some rare works even in 24 bit. Very few artists were participating, but this is a new work in progress, and just being rolled out. Lemme check my browser history here .. . .It looks very legitimate to me, read the Terms of Service for yourself, and tell me if you think the artists here are compensated for copyrighted works. They are definitely more expensive than even CDs or LPs (unless those CDs/Lps are rare of course), so they very well may be legitimate. I even see mention of Warner Music Group Artists in one section of the site. Ever heard of ABKCO recording artists? Here it is: https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php Recordings are available in FLAC and lossless ALAC, for Mac enthusiasts. I also found a UK based one, very on the up and up, switching from mp3 to making lossless available only to participating artists, I will have to dig deeper for that one.
I am frustrated that record companies don't recognize that old people like myself would like to download lossless files of 12'' vinyl singles, and CD Maxi-Singles, from the 1970s - 1990s decades, and would open my wallet to legally pay to download that old stuff, since collecting it in used vinyl and CDs is a pain in the *****. Oh yeah, and I don't have a turntable or a compatible tuner that could handle the input of analogue signals, mine was made in this decade and has input for optical/coaxial sPDIF and component audio L, R, but I don't think it would be very happy if I plugged a turntable into it. It's a little apartment sized unit, they call it a "Home Theater System" with a decent sub-woofer, rather than a "tuner" or what was the other name they used to call input devices . . . amplifiers right? And Pre-amp, been so long I forgot what I had that for, but it helped the analogue sound better I just remember that. I don't have enough time to restore my collection. An ex-lady was mad because I was moving out of her violent world, so she took my thousands of vinyl and CDs down to a local Wax Trax and sold them for pennies on the dollar, the tens of thousand I invested in them, and a lot of the ones they bought were "Promo, not for Resale," and they sold them in their used store anyway. Some of the Ultimix they resold for over $40. I had a lot of old Ultimix, disconet, X-mix, Hot Trax, Prime Cuts, I will never be consoled. Many of those DJ services I got while in a personal relationship with a well known celebrity DJ who is dead now, I can't say whom, but I have little time left as well, not even enough to publish my memoirs, they would make a page turner. I don't think my life is that interesting, but then when I see what so many people will buy to support modern day what they call "reality Stars(!)" their DVDs, and books, well their lives were crappy pity parties compared to my giant journey, and I think my life was rather event-less when compared to the likes of Steve Jobs, the NASA program astronauts, many people in the 20th Century alone who's lives mattered, and now all you have to do is get drunk, behave poorly in public, and piss yourself on TV, and your considered an overnight celebrity, I think my life story could beat that. After having so much music stolen from me, I haven't felt guilty downloading what I considered I already paid for, but I know it's not worth going to jail for. Nothing left to download in the world of scene/warez anyway. Mostly done the up and up all my life before 15 months ago when I learned about file sharing, might as well end on a good note and stop now while the gestapo are out policing the world and making enemies out of our friends behind other borders.
Cheers all.
