"No, it's not, allofmp3.com has full CD quality downloads and it's about 30 times cheaper too."
Because it's a completely illegal service. I'm not convinced that individual downloaders are breaking any laws, but Allofmp3.com almost certainly is (when the RIAA sues individual users, they're suing them for sharing, not for downloading, because it's the "copyrights" you're infringing - meaning you are distributing copies without authorization). So you may technically be ok downloading from them - or maybe not, IANAL - but you're on questionable moral ground if you actually believe in paying artists. The license that Allofmp3.com claims to have doesn't exist, and the organization they claim to have it from has said they're not authorized to license anyone to do what Allofmp3.com does anyway.
Maybe you don't care, in which case do whatever you want - I'm not gonna call the RIAA police on you. I'm just sayin'.
Of course, what Allofmp3.com does is exactly what I want a pay service to do (low prices, rip in a variety of non-DRM'd formats, pay per bandwidth used rather than per song), and if any such comparable service legally started operation here I'd sign up in a second. I'll never use iTMS or any other pay-per-song service with low-quality DRM'd files. I still rip all my CD's the old fashioned way for now (and I still buy new CD's to rip), mp3, no DRM, fairly high bit rates, VBR, using the latest LAME codec. Allofmp3.com's pretty much got all that exactly right, it's just a shame that it's not a legally sanctioned service.
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"No, it's not, allofmp3.com has full CD quality downloads and it's about 30 times cheaper too."
Because it's a completely illegal service. I'm not convinced that individual downloaders are breaking any laws, but Allofmp3.com almost certainly is (when the RIAA sues individual users, they're suing them for sharing, not for downloading, because it's the "copyrights" you're infringing - meaning you are distributing copies without authorization). So you may technically be ok downloading from them - or maybe not, IANAL - but you're on questionable moral ground if you actually believe in paying artists. The license that Allofmp3.com claims to have doesn't exist, and the organization they claim to have it from has said they're not authorized to license anyone to do what Allofmp3.com does anyway.
Maybe you don't care, in which case do whatever you want - I'm not gonna call the RIAA police on you. I'm just sayin'.
Of course, what Allofmp3.com does is exactly what I want a pay service to do (low prices, rip in a variety of non-DRM'd formats, pay per bandwidth used rather than per song), and if any such comparable service legally started operation here I'd sign up in a second. I'll never use iTMS or any other pay-per-song service with low-quality DRM'd files. I still rip all my CD's the old fashioned way for now (and I still buy new CD's to rip), mp3, no DRM, fairly high bit rates, VBR, using the latest LAME codec. Allofmp3.com's pretty much got all that exactly right, it's just a shame that it's not a legally sanctioned service.