Commercial download sites compatible with Zen Micro

[fokfokfok]

The difference between buying a cd in a russian store and downloading the cd from one of those sites is that when you buy the cd from the store the cd is either imported or licensed from the original copyright holders (label and artist). That means that it is approved by the copyright holders. If you download the music from such a site, it is not approved by the copyright holders and the amount of money they recieve is determined by some weird russian law. I'm a songwriter myself and I have yet to see any money from those sites. My songs are not on allofmp3 though.

But I think the music industry could learn from the russian sites. Buying legal downloads is way to expensive.

 

[AdamWill]

fokfokfok - many artists get nothing from itunes either, due to typical terrible-contract syndrome. There are a lot of artists with out-of-date contracts that said little or nothing about digital sales who get either nothing or practically nothing from online sales.

 

[Latexxx]

Allofmp3's license scheme is related to that of radio stations. They pay for general copyright association which eventually gives the money to its sister assiociations in different countries and they pay to real copyright holders. The artists don't even know that their music is being soldinstead of, they believe that they've got some radio time in Russia, but they get money and everything is legal.

 

[MikeB06]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fokfokfok But I think the music industry could learn from the russian sites. Buying legal downloads is way to expensive.

I agree with this completely. I just started looking seriously into these services just the other day, and most services are really a rip-off as far as I am concerned. Most of the American services (itunes, napster, amazon, walmart...) you end up paying around $1 for a single song, and $10 if you buy the whole album. The kicker for me is that you get a 128 or 192kbps wma or mp3, meaning you get only like 10-15% (I'm guessing here) of the full cd audio file, while paying about the same fraction of the cost of the song on the cd, or paying $10 for the whole CD and saving (or losing, depending on actual price of the CD) a couple bucks. And what do you get? Lower quality compressed sound files with limited formats to play them on. You don't get the actual CD or case and booklet, plus you have to buy blank CDs if you want to listen to them on a cd player. Just the principle of paying so much for a low quality item when its available in the store for the same relative cost-per-song, plus you have the actual disc that you can rip and encode for free.

..end rant...sorry I kinda lost control of myself there

.

 

[fokfokfok]

AdamWill, your'e right that many artists get ripped of by the labels, but at least they have the choice to sign the contracts. They have no choice whether they want to be included in a russian mp3 database.

Latexxx, I have never said that it was not legal, but don't you think that it is a little strange to consider downloads in America (if that's where you're from) as Russian airplay? Even if it is legal you're still cheating the artists and your money would be better spend on regular cd's and p2p-downloads for the rest. That would be a better deal for both you and the artists.

 

[viator122]

fokfokfok, what would you say if someone said, "Well, sometimes I want to buy CDs and rip them to my computer, or make a 'fair-use' backup copy to take in the car, but I can't because they're copy-protected. If the RIAA is going to play by the letter of the law with regards to digital music rights, then so am I."?

 

[blessingx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fokfokfok Those sites are not approved by the music industry, and since the artist's don't get any money there's really no point in buying from them. It's like paying for nothing.

If you're using the money that goes to the actual artists as the standard, you probably shouldn't be buying the majority of stuff sold in the States. Many many many albums end up paying the artists nothing (occasionally the band is actually out money). Profits are in concerts.

As for AllOfMP3, if 'original source' material is available, you have the choice when encoding. Figure about $.80 for -apx transcoded, $1.50 for not. Funny thing is, transcoding is quite demonized. Try a couple albums of both before automatically writing them off. Again not ideal, but that doesn't mean it's not quite acceptable.

 

[fokfokfok]

you guys are missing my point.

I complete agree that the music industry is totally ****ed up in many ways.

It's just that if you choose that you will not support the business then you might as well use p2p software and get it for free. No reason for paying for nothing.