http://www.allofmp3.com/

I am pretty interested in trying this site out. I just want to see if anyone else has used it. $0.01 per MB downloaded and you can select what bitrate you want the files in (available on most albums).

Something odd from their FAQ:

Q: I've order the file (album) with 384 kbps bitrate, but my player doesn't play it!
A: The '384 kbps' files encoded with FreeFormat technology. This technology is one of encoding methods with various compessing rates: from 8 to 640 kbps. FreeFormat's merits and demerits consists of very high encoding quality and feeble support from players' developers. This is professional tool which usualy used for mp3 to wav decoding for CDs record.

List of decoders which supports FreeFormat:
MAD: up to 640 kbps
lame: up to 550 kbps
Freeamp: up to 440 kbps
l3dec: up to 310 kbps

Example - decoding FreeFormat file by Lame decoder (command line):
lame.exe --decode filename.mp3

Also you can play FreeFormat files using MAD plug-in for Winamp
http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/mad-plugin/

Other files you can download from Software.

The english used on this site really sucks, but it seems to be a legit Russian business. Any opinions?

I agree with you about the use of "English"...... what worries me more is that you seem to need a maths degree to decipher how much it all costs

Attention !
Users with monthly subscription are to download in Online Encoding mode according to the following formula:

Online Encoding Album price is minused from your monthly subscription amount, subscription period is reduced accordingly.
One subscription day is calculated ( subscription amount / days ) and subscription period is reduced by “downloaded files cost in Online Encoding mode / the cost of one day subscription.

Example : User has a 2 month subscription ( 60 days ) – $9, has downloaded music files in Online Encoding mode for $2 ( 200 Mb ). Hence – $9/60 = $0,15 per day, $2/$0,15 = 13 days, that means subscription period is reduced from 60 to 47 days.

Your balance current info is available at MyAccount – MyBalance section.

Cheers, Sim

I gave it a go a few months back and it seemed to work pretty well. I've got the traffic subscription instead of the monthly one. Most of the tracks were listed as online-encode which would be charged by amount transferred.

- Trevor

What made you stop using it?

Nothing. I just haven't wanted anything in particular

- Trevor

ya im curious about it too, im bored of emusic atm. But it dosnt seem very straight forward on there prices. Rob if you get anymore information about this please post to the bored. Im going to look into it as well.

Seems interesting enough, but I'm more worried because they have a link to the new David Hasselhoff video on their front page.

I have noticed that some albums come up as "Wanted". Surely they don't request albums from users??? And if so, SURELY they wouldn't pay you for them.

Check that, they DO pay you (double the download rate) for wanted albums, if you digitize according to their specs.

Right, so this site is completely legit then.

How long before the RIAA notice?
How long before they lobby to get that site blocked to US users?

LOL your kidding. they pay you for albums you own.

I had a few spare pesos in my paypal account and decided to give them a try - I wasn't willing to give a credit card number. I went for the traffic one and put $5 in for 500 megs worth since I'm only on dialup. However I tried from my friends place (on cable in Australia) and had about 8 connections going for a total of around 300kbytes/sec. Each connection seemed to be maxxed at around 35-40kbytes/sec

Quality is pretty good. I've noticed one or two clicks that might be bad rips. The online encode stuff works really well. Once you selected, you basically select MP3, OGG or WMA. and then you can select CBR or VBR as well as LAME or Blade for MP3. You also select the LAME alt preset settings. MP3 encoding for a whole album is done within a 1 minute or so, so they have some pretty decent hardware behind things. I don't know for sure but I would guess they convert from WAVs (or possible FLACs).

It also doesn't count a download until you have finished properly. i.e. if my dialup drops out, the megabytes aren't charged. That's nice.

ID3v1 tags are filled except for the track number although they say they will be doing track numbers from now on. ID3v2 aren't.

I can't find this upload business anywhere although I've seen the "wanted" images stuff. Where is it mentioned?

Seems reasonable although I have some doubts over the legalities of it. Can the RIAA even touch a server in Russia?

My 2c

Program "Wanted"...looks like they only want 50 or so albums as of right now though.

http://www.allofmp3.com/wanted.shtml?action=wanted