Where does South African consumers’ money go? To the artists? I think not!

The leading music store in SA, Musica, has decreased all it’s “top 20″ albums prices by almost a third in the attempt to attract the customers they are losing. How can they afford that, one third, if the pricing is realistic? Also they complain about having to import the music to SA, but the CD’s and thier covers are printed locally. So where does the import costs come from?

As long as the people selling music keeps ripping off the consumer and not give the artist thier fair cut, I will keep buying music off the net from Allofmp3 or whoever else is willing to sell it.

And by the way, the last time I checked the artists whose music I bought off the net weren’t pourpors, but multi millionairs. So who is really complaining ?

http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download.htm

How are they getting their money?

Allofmp3 is actually surprisingly expensive compared to other Russian music shops.

I see you Gachhy

Really ?
You know this how, exactly ??

AllofMP3 pays a licensing collective a fee.
Like soundscan in the americas.

The collective pays the artists .. oops .. the COPYRIGHT HOLDERS
which are almost never the actual artist .. like soundscan and their
ilk are supposed to ( we all know how THAT goes ).

They abide by russian law .. to the letter.
The appropriate Russian licensing agencies get the proper payment
to distribute accordingly.

Artists get squat because they no longer have any control over
their work .. all proceeds belong to the label.
The songwriters usually get their cut .. different collective
agency.
The producers get paid in advance .. per Job .. which is deducted
from whatever royalties the artist is SUPPOSED to get , so the
producer crap you spew is just that .. crap.

The labels steal all of the artists pay, and blame everyone else.

Idiot.

The reason you get squat is not because of this person. It is beacuse change is needed.

Please jump on the bandwagon to help change this.
Your comment indicates that you are thinking the way they want you to think.

One thing keeps bugging me. What’s the reason that the Big 4 focuses on Allofmp3? What about Gomusic, Legalsounds, Mp3Sugar and dozens of other Russian sites selling cheap DRM free MP3?

Allofmp3 may act like everything is under control, but they are caught in the squeeze of the boycott by Credit Card companies. The big 4 haven been very successful in pressuring credit cars companies to refrain from handling payments to Allofmp3.

Mediaservices, the company behind Allofmp3, have set up a new website named Mp3sparks.com, a clear Allofmp3 clone. The purpose of this move most likely is to get the cash flowing again. Unlike Allofmp3, Mp3Sparks is licensed by FAIR. The credit card processor Chronopay declared a few months ago that they will only do business with download stores licensed by FAIR. For a while this move helped. Users of Mp3Sparks could pay via their credit card. Allofmp3users even were invited to have their account transferred from Allofmp3 to Mp3Sparks. Somehow something went wrong, payment by credit card is no longer possible. A few users have been able to pay but not via Chronopay. Their payments were handled by eCentru another Russian payment processor.

Maybe your contact at Allofmp3 can explain what’s happening?

It’s a specious rationale to suggest that because a medium can potentially store/transmit audio data, it should be taxed/levied.

And what about other businesses? What about book authors? Books can potentially stored on these same devices. Are these taxes being shared amongst them? The list is limitless…

What about shops which have a percentage of their stock stolen through shoplifting? Will the government tax the population further to compensate them? If they are doing it for the music business, why not everyone else?. Oh, i forgot, the entertainment business buys/rents politicians, and has pervasive lobby groups.

I wonder if you would mind if I stole your paycheck every week!

I’ve only purchased music from one online retailer - AllOfMP3. Their prices were incredible, I chose from an array of formats and bitrates, there was no DRM, and the service was prompt and of high quality.

AllOfMP3 has ruined all other online music retailers for me forever. Except for the lousy site organization (as of 3 years ago) I can’t imagine a more pleasurable music shopping experience.

$5 got me 3 albums and some singles. If a used CD costs me about $10, shouldn’t an intangible, reproducible file with the same content cost far, far less?

Long live AllOfMP3.

Canadians should read this closely as this relates to the type of objections that the major labels have against Canada’s Private Copying regime. Unfortunately, unlike in Russia, many Canadians seem to be opposed to this regime as well — they appear to prefer lawsuits to levies for recorded music.

On the other hand, I wish the levies were moved from legacy recording media (that’s now how we share music now) and moved to a voluntary system where those who wish to non-commercially share music, movies or television (including mashups) would pay a flat-fee to a collective society (likely through the ISP as part of the monthly service charge to make things simpler).

We also need a compulsory regime for commercial Internet download and Internet radio. I disagree with the industry executives that claim that the current system of private negotiations is working out well.

For those in the USA, think of the “Save Internet Radio” which is based on the same issue (although it is streaming rather than downloads). Collective licensing rates are being set so high by the US government that it will drive the big net radio stations to have to make special deals with the major labels. The net result: The redundant labels make a lot of money, and the actual composer and musician make far less money. While the rate was set far too high, the compulsory license had a formula that was far more fair in terms of the percentages that the composer and musician would make.

As is the case for most of the battles involving music these days, the target of the labels isn’t “piracy” but attacks against the interests of composers and musicians. Even though labels are redundant in the new economy (only needed to finance the historically high costs of recording, editing and distributing recorded content), they want to take the lions share of any music industry money and keep composers and musicians poor.