Well, I polished up my paypal account, and too the allofmp3 plunge. So far so good, put $5 in have gotten about 4 albums of music out at 256Kbs CBR lame.

So far so good, all the stuff I have downloaded has been high quality, no clicks, pops or other nastiness. I even downloaded a couple songs I had just encoded with Lame myself, and compared the two. I could not tell the difference, and I really tried.

I honestly think that a variation of the allofmp3 model is the only way that online music sales will flourish. The labels and distributors are gonna have to subscribe to a volume profit model.

Allofmp3 supposidly pays a blanket license fee, similar to what radio stations pay. In reality, I think this is closer to what will have to work in the real world. I mean, think about it, regardless of the care you take Mp3 files are just that - computer files. They get lost, deleted, mangled, and formats change and get better. Why should I pay the same as I pay for a CD that has "full" quality, and is a physical item? There are no shipping costs, no (little) overhead costs, no payola, retailer inscentives, etc. If only 20% of what I paid for "Hells Bells" gets back to AC/DC that's still something.

And I do believe a model like this will work - with a few variations.

Something more akin to the blockbuster model meets allofmp3.

Hits: $0.02 - 0.03/mb
New releases: $0.02/mb
Favorites: $0.01/mb
Bargain Bin: $0.005/mb or certain formats "free" (64kbs maybe)

Sign up for a debit-based account (add $$ via paypal etc) and get free low-quality downloads (to see if you like anything), otherwise limited to 30 sec like allofmp3. I'd make the subscription model different - for paying a monthly fee you'd get preferred customer discounts (certain new releases at favorites prices, freebies, etc), and faster downloads, not a free for all.

But the key is the flexibility - let people choose their format: Ogg, MP3, FLAC, AC3, AAC, WMA etc. and bitrate. Those who are willing to pay for FLAC will pay about the same as retail - and they should. Those who think 256CBR MP3 is good enough, will pay about 1/2 or less of retail. But the record companies, if they will stop being stupid and let this happen, will still make huge profits. Think if Amazon got on board with the allofmp3 model.

Under this model, for "highway to hell" I paid about $1. It's old, I only used 256Kbs, and why really should it cost more? Figure the e-tailer takes 10%, the record co's get the rest and pay the artist their big fat 2-5% royalty. Still a good profit for a 20 year old album that cost the record company virtually nothing to sell to me.

Now, the new Brittany album might cost me $3 in the same format, or up to $12-15 in FLAC. It's all about the pricing model...

Intersting that the first $$ I have spent on a CD in probably 7 years I spent at allofmp3... Why? I think I'm getting a good deal, and Im willing to pay for it. Maybe up to twice as much or more for "new stuff". But not for back catalog. I still buy CDs occasionally, but only at used record shops, where again for $3-5 I feel Im getting what I pay for.