AllOfMP3,
MP3Sparks and
MemphisMembers are brands of
online music store that were operated by Mediaservices, Inc., a company founded in 2000 in
Moscow,
Russia. The stores formerly sold music encoded in standard,
non-protected audio formats at a significantly lower cost than other online music stores. In 2008, the original AllOfMp3 site has been replaced by a blog.
The company has been plagued by
legal issues for some time due to accusations, mainly from the
record industry, that they are operating illegally and engaging in
music piracy. In
2009 Mediaservices, Inc was sold to an American company who hopes to turn it into a multi-media company to compete with
Apple Inc.'s,
iTunes Store.
Revenue
Run by the Moscow company MediaServices, AllOfMP3 had an estimated revenue of
US$30 million in 2006. According to the IFPI and various other label representatives the company has never transferred money to any (western) label. AllofMP3 claims to have offered settlements to IFPI, which AllOfMP3 claims IFPI refused to accept.
Legal issues
AllOfMP3's legality is controversial. It is licensed in Russia by the
Russian Organization for Multimedia and Digital Systems, a license similar to agreements held by Russian
radio stations. AllOfMP3 states that this agreement allows it to legally distribute music from all artists and all labels. This is disputed by most major record labels, which generally do not recognize ROMS or believe that it has the authority to distribute their works. AllOfMP3.com makes no claims as to its legality outside of Russia. However it is accessible to visitors in all countries.
In 2005, Moscow authorities began investigating the site as a result of a formal complaint from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), who accused the site of "large-scale copyright infringement".
On June 1, 2006, the
New York Times reported that US trade negotiators have warned Russia that the continued existence of AllOfMP3 could jeopardize Russia's entry into the
World Trade Organization. This was reiterated by the
United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab in remarks to the US
Chamber of Commerce on September 28, 2006. She later told reporters that "I have a hard time imagining Russia becoming a member of the WTO and having a Web site like that up and running that is so clearly a violation of everyone's intellectual property rights."
Pressure from the IFPI resulted in AllOfMP3 being blocked by the Danish
ISP,
Tele2 in October 2006.
On December 18, 2006, the
RIAA, on behalf of
EMI,
Sony BMG,
Universal Music Group, and
Warner Music Group filed a US$1.65 trillion lawsuit against the site. That equates to US$150,000 for each of 11 million songs downloaded between June to October 2006, and exceeds Russia's entire GDP. $150,000 is the statutory limit for copyright infringement awards in the United States. Allofmp3 responded to the lawsuit saying
"AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York. This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the mean time, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws.".
In
May 2007, UK police arrested a 25-year old man on fraud charges for selling allofmp3.com vouchers on sites such as
eBay and allofmp3vouchers.co.uk. The man was reported to be funneling money from the sale of these vouchers back to the owners of the site in Russia . A statement in relation to this alleged transfer of funds to Russia was made by the
British Phonographic Industry chairman .
In an interview with
p2pnet, a MediaServices representative said "It is disappointing that United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab completely and deliberately mischaracterized AllofMP3.com. Furthermore, it is irresponsible to use AllofMP3.com as a negotiating instrument in an attempt to extract concessions from Russia in return for US support for accession to the World Trade Organization".
In
July 2007, a Moscow court ruled that
Visa's decision to cut off payments to allTunes was illegal.
In
August 2007, Denis Kvasov, head of the company which owned AllofMP3.com, was acquitted of all charges stemming from copyright infringement prosecution. The prosecution was seen as a test case of Russia's commitment to fighting
piracy, and was brought after
EMI,
NBC Universal and
Time Warner lobbied for such prosecution.
In
January 2008 it was reported
that MP3Sparks.com and its associated web sites were being hosted (since
December 2007)
by
AbdAllah Internet, a Turkish web hosting service which allegedly provides safe harbour for
spam and
malware operations as well as having strong links to the
Russian Business Network. For this reason access to the AbdAllah network is blocked by some ISPs, including all UK members of
LINX, therefore blocking access to MP3Sparks as well.
On May 20, 2008, the
RIAA dropped all copyright infringement charges against AllOfMP3.com.
Closure of AllOfMP3
In June 2007, AllOfMP3 was closed down following pressure from the
Russian government. Visitors to the site were greeted by a message stating that the service was "closed for maintenance". MP3Sparks remained available, as did the AllTunes download service.
Following the acquittal of Denis Kvasov by a Moscow court in August 2007, a brief message was posted at the site's blog, stating "The service will be resumed in the foreseeable future".
About the services
The sites offer
Russian and
English user interfaces. All functions, except for the buying of songs and full length song previews, are available to unregistered users (and full length preview of songs is restricted to individuals who have spent a total of $50 or more on the website). Registration is free. The store maintains an account balance for each user; while a user's account has a positive balance, he or she can continue downloading music. To do so, the user selects the files for download from the store's catalog.
Pricing model
Unlike some US-based music stores such as
Apple's
iTunes Store, MediaServices' sites charge for the volume of data downloaded, not for individual songs.
This price is often reduced by a complicated system of discounts based on cumulative usage, promotions, and type of payment. These discounts can reduce the effective price of downloads by up to one third of the original cost.
Payment methods
The sites operate using a pre-paid balance method. Users fund their account using a
credit or
debit card, in increments of US$10 or more.
However, action taken in late 2006 by
Visa and
MasterCard made it impossible for users to fund their accounts at the main AllOfMP3 site.
Users outside UK and US can also pay using a variety of credit cards at ChronoPay processor. ChronoPay had announced on March 20, 2007 that they would no longer be processing payments from online Russian music stores that only hold a
ROMS license (e.g. AllOfMP3), but this does not apply to MP3Sparks which has an NP FAIR license..
Between April and June 2007, it had become difficult for users to fund their AllOfMP3 accounts themselves, and a number of users and sites began selling AllOfMP3 gift vouchers on the Internet. However, in May 2007 a man who had been selling vouchers was arrested in London, and this led many other voucher sellers to shut down their operations.
Download formats
AllOfMP3 (and now MP3Sparks) allows users to choose from a variety of
audio codecs for audio files. Lossy formats are offered in
constant bitrates up to 320kbit/s or
variable bitrates up to maximum quality in the following formats:
Select albums are also being made available in
Lossless audio codecs in the following formats:
Most music is encoded straight from source, which is dubbed
Online Encoding Exclusive, so gapless albums could provide
gapless playback, unlike most other music services. There is no extra charge for using the Online Encoding Exclusive service. The user sets the codec parameters, including the desired bitrate, allowing for superior quality over other music download services such as iTunes and Napster.
Downloaded files do not contain
digital rights management information, allowing unrestricted use between multiple computers and
digital audio players. This differentiates AllOfMP3 from many other music download services, which limit the use of the music the user may purchase and the platforms on which it may be played.
The websites also offer free, full album previews, streamed at a bitrate of 24 kilobits per second (roughly equivalent to analog
telephone audio quality). Registered users who have spent less than $50 have access to 90 second samples, and unregistered users have access to 30 second samples.
Music for Masses
In late 2006, AllOfMP3 experimented with a feature called "Music for Masses" which allowed users to download
DRM-protected music for free. The files were encoded in a proprietary MP3 format (.mp3x) that could only be played in the Music for Masses player, and could not be transferred to a portable media device. However, the DRM protection was cracked within a week. Although AllOfMP3 released a compulsory update to the player software which rendered the original crack unusable, they eventually removed the service in December 2006.
Download methods
The standard method of downloading purchased music is directly from the services' "My Downloads" pages. Files can be downloaded from the links on this page using a
web browser, or alternatively a
download manager or a command-line utility such as
wget (the site offers a "list of links" which can be written to a file and used as input for such tools). Download speeds vary but typically hover around 40-120 kilobytes per second on
broadband connections.
A more streamlined experience for AllOfMP3 account holders is offered by the
Microsoft Windows application
allTunes and the older
Microsoft Windows and
Mac OS X application
AllofMP3 Explorer. These applications allow the user to browse and search the entire AllOfMP3 catalogue (which is downloaded and stored locally for faster searching) and select files for download. The application then downloads the files in the background.
