Here it is: registered members on Michelle Branch’s official site can now listen to the original, solo version of “Lay Me Down” (yes, this one) in its entirety (albeit in streaming fashion only).

The related announcement was posted on michellebranch.com, on March 24th. (Thank you Krista & Ross for tipping me on this!) Branch wrote the following in a thread on her site’s message board:

Just a heads up to let you know that I finally found the “OG” version of Lay Me Down and WB posted a streaming version for anyone caring to hear it. (www.michellebranch.com) Whoa, talk about a walk down memory lane.

The thread is full of thank you’s and compliments from fans, from all over the world; this is normal –

Because this song, in this version, is amazing. It’s all we ever imagined it would be. It’s rockier, it’s “putting my heart out there” done right, it’s perfect.

Also: we’ve always felt that the Wreckers’ version had a couple of weak, odd-sounding moments. They all had the same characteristic; they felt rushed, forced — locate your copy of the song and have a listen to the following:

• “since I begged for / anything but now I want…” (before the 1st chorus)
• “and you’d never even try to anyway” (end of 1st chorus)
• “as long as I can see it in your eyes” (before the chorus kicks in for the 2nd time — this is the most characteristic example)

Imagine our surprise when we found out that in Josh Abraham’s version all of these kinks have been ironed; and the entire track flows with grace.

Finally, “I’m sorry / Lay me down / I’m lonely / Lay me down” sends chills down our spine on every single listen. (Josh Abraham, we must buy you a beer.)

So, all in all: “Lay Me Down” in its original version is nothing short of amazing. It was worth making such a big deal for those 56 seconds, after all.

What’s Next?

It would be a pitty for “Lay Me Down” to not get a proper release; a physical (B-side?) or digital (iTunes?) format, anything, it doesn’t matter. If you drop by the respective thread on michellebranch.com, do note that you’d be willing to see it getting an actual release. (And be sure to thank Michelle for taking the time to dig up this song and offer it to the fans.)

Με την μερίδα των DVD-players που υποστηρίζουν τον νέο τρόπο εισαγωγής υποτίτλων DMF διαρκώς να αυξάνει, πλέον δεν απαιτείται η ενσωμάτωση των υποτίτλων στο video αλλά η προσθήκη άλλου ενός stream στα υπάρχοντα δυο.

Που σημαίνει ότι πλέον μπορείτε να ενσωματώσετε τους υπότιτλους σε ένα video σε χρόνο dt (~1 λεπτό). Η μέθοδος χρησιμοποιεί το εξαιρετικό — και απλούσταστο στη χρήση — πρόγραμμα AVIAddXSubs (ακριβείς οδηγίες χρήσης εδώ).

Τέλος σε αυτό το thread στο GreekTVsubs και συγκεκριμένα στο πρώτο μήνυμα θα βρείτε μια λίστα των συσκευών DVD που αναπαράγουν τα αρχεία του AVIAddXSubs χωρίς πρόβλημα. Με μια συσκευή των 30€ (προσωπικά θα πάω μάλλον για το Audioline DVD 024) μπορείτε πλέον να δείτε DivX με ελληνικούς υποτίτλους — γρήγορα και φθηνά.

A few things to note:

• we’re not alone: checking out our referrer logs — a ton of people want to find out more about this song; not too bad for a track that hasn’t been released. Checking out our inbox — a bunch of emails from fans of the song wishing us good luck and hoping we get our hands on the track. (Some even took the time to send us live versions of the song — thanks!) This is odd — 16 months ago, when the original “Lay me down” entry was written we thought only we and maybe some people that frequented over at Branch’s message board cared. Turns out this is not the case.
• hey Josh, nice talking to you: two weeks after we posted about it, we got our very first email regarding this — from Josh Abraham, himself. (Pause for a minute, and think about it.) Unfortunately, Josh was rather, shall we say, cryptic in his message (i.e. told us nothing except from a “you guys are pretty funny!!!!”) and chose not to follow up in our emails (two of them, we didn’t want to spam the guy). Bummer, but we respect his decision — and thank you for sending us that email anyway, Josh; we’ve almost had a heart attack when we noticed an email from “Josh Abraham” waiting for us in our inbox.
• do something about it: finally, there idea of writing to Michelle’s label and asking for “Lay me down” to be released as a b-side on one of The Wreckers‘ singles (their album drops on May 23rd) has been tossed quite a few times. Let’s sit on that for a while…

Call for Action

How do we go about it so that our actions have the best possible result? Do we gather a list of names/emails first and then send a single letter to the company signed by that list, or each one of us sends a separate email? And are we talking email or snail mail? Maybe go with an online petition?

The “Comments” section below is yours — discuss, help us with writing the text, whatever. We’re all in this together.

(Also post a comment if you’d like to stay updated on the “Lay Me Down” front — just make sure you use a valid email address in the “email” field; no worries, it’s never published and we hate spam as much as you too.)

UPDATE: (March 27th, 2008) You can now listen to the original version in its entirety, in streaming mode from Michelle Branch’s official website. Click here for more.

An Intro

For those not following this stuff closely, we’ve got –generally speaking– two versions of ID3 tags (and a track can carry them both):

• ID3v1 (actually ID3v1.1): 128 bytes long, located at the end of the file, fields can only carry a limited number of characters, etc.
• ID3v2 (actually ID3v2.3.0 — are there any programs that write ID3v2.4.0?): extendable/expandable (up to 256MB long!?), located at the beginning of the file, no character limit on the fields, support for pictures, etc.

The Tests

(Please note that this is iTunes for Windows we’re talking about.)

I did a few tests to find out how iTunes messes with the two versions, by adding/editing the info of a track that had:

• neither an ID3v1, nor an ID3v2 tag
• only an ID3v1 tag
• only an ID3v2 tag
• both an ID3v1 and an ID3v2 tag, with different information on each

The Results

In all of my tests, iTunes would only edit (or add, in the case of the first two tests) the ID3v2 tag.

It makes sense that iTunes only wants to “speak” with ID3v2 since it’s the one that supports album art, and “richer” metadata, which is the whole music organizing mantra. We should also note, that in the last case, where the track carried both an ID3v1 tag and an ID3v2 tag with different information on each, iTunes would read the ID3v2 tag and neglect the ID3v1 one.

This is generally good news for me, since all of my tracks are stripped from their ID3v1 tags, and I only deal with ID3v2. Thus, I know that when I have to edit a track’s info from within iTunes, no ID3v1 tag will be suddenly added (as is the case with Creative’s PlayCenter; don’ even get me started with that bloatware).

Something Isn’t Right Here

But, there’s something wrong with this behaviour, isn’t it?

ID3v1 may suck, but there are still MP3 players out there(mostly those CD players that can handle MP3 — and that includes most car audio players too) that can only read ID3v1.

You can see where this is going.

You’ve just burned a CD with MP3 tracks using iTunes, so that you can listen to it in your car stereo. And when “…Baby One More Time” (OK, we’re pushing things here deliberately) starts blasting through your speakers , the LCD display reads “ARTIST: brittany spaers“, “SONG: 1 more time“.

You’re certain you’ve tagged Britney’s album properly, and know how to spell her name; you check your iTunes library again, and you confirm this.

So What’s Happening Here?

As we’ve described above, iTunes only interacts with ID3v2, so you’re out of luck in fixing this from within Apple’s music management program (you’ve got to revert to a separate tag editing program, or maybe “Winamp” → “File Info”, and do some manual editing.)

A Proposed Solution

I can only see one way of fixing this.

iTunes should always update (if it already exists), or create (if it doesn’t) the correspondent ID3v1 tag when you add tracks to the library, or modify their information. This sucks for people like me who want to avoid ID3v1 tags entirely, because I got no use for’em, but we’ve got to think of people who listen to their MP3s in devices that can only read ID3v1.

A few extra notes on this: since ID3v1 has got some character limits on its fields (e.g. “30 characters max. allowed for ‘Artist’”), these ID3v1 fields would obviously only carry the first ‘x’ allowed characters from their ID3v2 counterparts. And in the case of ID3v1 genres, where you can only choose between 80 predefined ones, if the ID3v2 genre doesn’t belong to one of the predefined ones, then the ID3v1 genre field should be left blank.

In an ideal world, Apple would add an option in “Edit” → “Preferences” → “Advanced”:

Keep ID3v1 tags in sync? [x]

Checking it (as shown in the example above) causes iTunes to behave like we’ve described two paragraphs above.

Unchecking this option, removesthe ID3v1 tag (if it exists) when adding tracks to your library, and only deals with ID3v2. Again, it doesn’t just ignore ID3v1, it removes it if present, treating it as cruft.

I’d really like to see the “ideal world” solution applied, but Apple hates extra options, so chances of this being realized are slim.

What Happens With the Mac Version?

As we’ve noted above, this iTunes behaviour can only be confirmed for Windows (the XP version), as this is how we’ve conducted our tests. I’d love to hear from Mac users if the same applies to their case too.

It could use a couple of improvements (most of them minor) when it comes to how the site works and looks, though.

For example, the site’s all about selling music. How do you know what music to buy? Unless you’re a fan of randomness and serendipity, logic says you’ll want to see some sales/downloads charts and some reviews.

Charts and Stats

Magnatune offers plenty of stats of your pleasure (best-selling by genre this month, and more), but how you get to those pages? The only links I could find where on the bottom of the artists‘ and genres‘ pages. And with the artists’ page being quite long, your best to find it is via the genres’ page.

So, suggested improvement #1: more prominent placement of charts — why not on top of the artists/genres listing? And why not a direct link from the top of each page on the site, or from the left sidebar?

Customer Reviews

Charts are very good, but they’re not a proper, all-around indicator of the album’s identity. Sure the album’s probably good because it sells a lot, but why is it good? What’s its strong point? Do only a few tracks standout, or is it good as a whole? Is it good because of the great lyrics, the inspiring music, the captivating choruses, the unresistable beats, or you-name-it? (The information on each artist’s page doesn’t cut it, and it’s probably not meant for this either.)

If you’re looking for such information before getting an album, Magnatune offers you the chance to stream it in its entirety, which is undoubtedly a great option.

But it’s an option only for those with fast connections; and there’s lots of us living with slo-o-ow connections who still want to be a part of Magnatune. Listening in low-fi is a somewhat viable option, but you can’t count on it to draw conclusions on some aspects of the music (such as the quality of the production, the various layers, etc.).

Also, listening to a stream takes time (equal to the album’s duration ~40-60 minutes). And this is not time where music acts as a background activity; if you wish to draw conclusions on the music, you have to focus on it, making the listening session a foreground activity.

So while streaming rocks, it has a few weak points; keep that point, I’ll be back at it, in a second.

Another way to find out more information about the good albums, is by visiting the Magnatune Forums. Good luck discovering the threads talking about good picks; you’re on your own when it comes to finding them, and when you come to think of it, it’s just too much trouble for something that should be so simple.

Conclusion (and suggested improvement #2): let customers add their reviews on the albums’ pages, Amazon-style. This is a vast improvement over the searching-the-forums-for-good-picks method, and a nice compliment to the streaming (perfect for those who don’t want to spend 60 minutes to listen to the full stream).

Why do listeners think this is a recording worthy of my time? What’s so special about it? That’s the special insight customer reviews give, and that’s what’s missing from the picture in Magnatune.

And it’s information I can skim in a few minutes, closing the gap in the preview-buy window.

[Note: only let those who have paid (i.e. not licenced it) to review it; you value/judge something far more seriously when you've paid for it.]

Minor Rants

Mostly a personal wish, but I’m sure someone out there shares it too: the grey-text-on-white-background on the site’s pages (example) should go. #666666? What’s wrong with dear ol’ black (#000000)? A bit darker, but insanely more readable and makes me feel like I’m not sitting in front a bleached screen.

And while we’re at it. A quick look at the source code showed bad signs of HTML 4-itis (probably because John Buckman, Magnatune’s founder, isn’t primarily a designer?):

<FONT FACE=”Verdana, Arial, utopia, sans-serif” SIZE=”2″ COLOR=”#666666″>

This is obviously trivial since the site’s about music, and the redundant markups in the code don’t add remarkably to the pages’ loading time, but still; such a hip idea deserves to be XHTML/CSS (and it’ll raise John’s geek quotient by at least 10 points).

In Closing

John is a smart guy and I’m sure he’s either working on some of my suggestions as we speak, or he has dismissed some of them for reasons I haven’t thought of yet (I’m not claiming these are false reasons; just that they haven’t crossed my mind yet).

For the slim chance he has missed some of my suggestions, I hope he considers them and makes Magnatune even better.

In it, Branch is heard singing an extract of a song called “Lay Me Down”. The clip was instantly adored by many fans, its short length (56 seconds) didn’t stop them from naming it a “favorite” and it had them anxiously waiting for the album’s release, so they could listen to the song in its entirety.

You can listen to the clip here.

(We don’t consider ourselves fans, but we’ve stumbled upon said clip just recently, and we must admit we liked it a lot; hence this post.)

Surprise

“Hotel Paper” was released on June 24, 2003; for reasons unbeknownst to humans till this very day, “Lay Me Down” wasn’t in it.

A Different Take

On November 4, 2004, Michelle Branch announced she would be teaming with Jessica Harp to form the band “The Wreckers“. A couple of months later, it was known that “Lay Me Down” would be included in the the Wreckers’ debut album (title ‘tk‘, probably dropping in March). Fears that the song would be re-recorded to suit the Wreckers’ country-esque style were confirmed 10 days ago, with the release of this video from the band’s studio sessions.

Crap (though, to be fair, many people like the new version too).

Producers, Producers

The original version of “Lay Me Down” was produced by Josh Abraham (credits), who did “One Of These Days” in Branch’s latest record.

The newest version is probably being produced by John Leventhal who’s in charge of the Wreckers’ album. Leventhal (bio – credits) did “Hotel Paper” and “It’s You” on Branch’s latest record.

Our Point Being?

As you’ve probably figured out by now, this means that the original version of “Lay Me Down” will probably never see the light of day. Isn’t it bad for such a great song to end up this way?

We thought so.

This is the Internet, the place where everything’s possible. I’m sure that someone out there has a friend who’s close to Josh Abraham, maybe works in his label (JAB Records), or –I dunno– is a close relative to Staind (or Korn).

Bug your contacts, see what you can find, help us unearth this great song. Email us with hints and tips (or the full version of the song, thankyou) – full anonymity is guaranteed if you wish so, and you’ll be our next best friend.

Alternatively, you can just leave a comment below.

UPDATE #1: Please read “Lay Me Down: Update + Call for Action“. Your help would be appreciated.

UPDATE #2: (March 27th, 2008) You can now listen to the original version in its entirety, in streaming mode from Michelle Branch’s official website. Click here for more.

The player’s cost? $200. The drive’s cost? $450 (it even goes to $500).

Wait, Something’s Going on Here

It didn’t take long for hackers to take notice, extract the drive from the MuVo² (note: Apple, being the smart guys they are, have modded the iPod Mini’s drive, so it has no use outside of the player – more on that in a minute), and either use it as a storage medium for their digital cameras, or –even better– sell it on eBay.

To make the things even better (for the consumer, of course), even the MuVo²’s empty shells could go on auction (going around ~$40), since they could still work as MP3 players, if you had a Compact Flash memory card to spare (note: as the documentation shows, not all memory card brands/models work).

The whole process of extracting the drive got documented quite extensibly online, with guides full of pictures and step-by-step instructions. Here are a few pointers:

• MuVo² MicroDrive Extraction — andymack.com (January 08, 2004)
• MuVo² Reborn – Inserting Another MicroDrive — andymack.com (January 28, 2004)
• MuVo 4GB drive/CF Swap and Screws — dpreview.com forums (January 29, 2004)
• Muvo² 4GB Hard Drive Extraction – PCconsultant.com
• Hitachi MicroDrive Removal: Creative Nomad MuVo² — studio2f.com (March 22, 2004)

With all that information available, word spread quite fast and MuVo² stocks disappearead even faster. New stocks would arrive, only to go away within minutes.

Fast Forward to Today

Creative Labs probably took notice right away, but didn’t take any immediate action; maybe because it boosted their player’s sales, beyond their wildest imagination. But now, 6 months later, and –I’m just guessing here, but it’s a good guess– after some big pressure from Hitachi’s part (after all, it was their $450 4GB MicroDrive sales’ numbers that were going down), the MuVo² version 2.0 is about to be released.

What’s the One Big “Feature” of Version 2.0?

You guessed it right. The drive “is not removable and will not function in MicroDrive or Compact Flash devices”, as the Amazon product page notes. Despite, that very clear note (”Please note”, in bold) and the “version 2.0″ addendum in the product’s name, it’s still #1 in the Eary Adopter Audio & Video” Amazon category.

People apparently think they’re going to get a product identical to “version 1″, which is out of stock, of course…

We should have seen it coming though. After all, there was this very informative comment three months ago, over at studio2f.com predicting this and explaining how it’s going to be implemented. This particular comment is also useful in understanding why it’s so much difficult to make the MicroDrive inside the iPod Mini work normally outside of it. Refer to this page and skip to the comment posted on “February 26, 2004 — 11:55AM”. Some minor editing (capitalisation, spelling, etc.) aside, here it is, copied and pasted for your convenience:

Folks, I talked with the Hitachi senior apps engineer and it will NOT work and was expressly designed as such. CF cards support 3 interface modes: Memory, I/O and IDE.

The iPod drives are stuck in IDE mode and most cameras expect Memory or I/O mode. It’s part of the CF standard for the host to command the CF card what mode to go into at power on, but it appears that the iPod MicroDrive ignores this command, or at least my Digital Rebel does not issue the command.

I tried both putting the MicroDrive in my Rebel and copying the partiton map, firmware and mountable partitions of the iPod onto my 1GB Flash and putting that in the iPod Mini. Neither worked.

It may still be possible to put a Flash card in the iPod Mini though, Apple may have not connected the pin that would command the Flash card to go into IDE mode.

He claims that soon Creative will be using these “special” MicroDrives so the Muvo² hack will be disappearing as well.

What follows is a thorough and frequently-updated review/guide to the service.

As I said, I was aware of AllofMP3’s existence a couple of years now. It was only until two months ago though, that I decided to take the plunge and become a full member (i.e. join and pay for the service). This post summarizes my experience and ends with my conclusions on the service.

The Rather Easy Part: Signing Up

First step in this journey was to become an AllofMP3 member. I filled in a subscription form, asking for my name, address, username/password for the site, etc. While it wasn’t a spartan form by any means, it wasn’t difficult to complete. Also, nobody forced me to enter real data. Actually “username/password” and “e-mail address” are the only fields one should fill in with care; for all the others, let your imagination ride! I submitted the form, an auto-generated e-mail containing a “verification” link got sent to my e-mail address within minutes, I clicked on the link to verify my account and I was in.

Not yet actually. At this moment I was an AllofMP3 member, but I had a $0 balance. Meaning I could only download albums/track marked as “free”; needless to say the “free” selection is both limited and uninteresting (to most, anyway).

The “Difficult” Part: Giving Them Your Hard-Earned Cash

To be able to fully exploit AllofMP3’s services, you need to join the “V.I.P. club”, which is a fancy name for “Paid Members Club”.

With all due respect to the “comrades”, the fact that AllofMP3 is based in Russia doesn’t help things much when it comes to such issues as credibility, site security, etc.

Before giving them my money, I made sure to read all the “Help” pages (esp. the “Payments” section) to find out more about the pricing scheme, the security mechanicms behind the site, etc. My questions were more or less answered, so I was ready to join the “V.I.P. club.”

I clicked on the “My Balance” link, then on the “new payment” button at the bottom of the page, to complete a three-step process.

Choosing the Payment Method

There were four ways to pay:

1. using a credit/debit card (VISA/MasterCard/Eurocard, Dinners Club, JSB, Union Card)
2. using PayPal (which I guess is the recommended for maximum security, but this option disappears often)
3. XROST Prepaid iCards (haven’t tried it but reports say it’s very easy to use, plus you can pay for an XROST iCard using PayPal, so it’s basically a way to use PayPal for AllofMP3)
4. using an AllofMP3 gift certificate (works like those Amazon.com gift certificates, someone has to send you one so you can use it — highly unlikely)

I chose option #1 and moved to the next step.

How Much Do You Want to Pay?

I was presented with the following options:

1. 500 Mb – $5
2. 1 Gb – $10
3. 1.5 Gb – $15
4. 2.5 Gb – $25
5. 5 Gb – $50

Made my selection and pressed the “select” button.

Finalising the Payment

I got a message saying:

On the next step you’ll be transferred to the site of processing company Cyberplat (www.cyberplat.com) Please, be careful during typing information about your credit card. All typed data will be transferred using SSL connection 3.0 (to protect the data and prevent and guarantee its safety).

I clicked on the “payment” button, got redirected to a special page hosted on Cyberplat, gave my credit card info, submitted the form and a few seconds later I got a message saying my payment was accepted. I was now a member of the “V.I.P. club.”

To make sure AllofMP3 had received my money, I clicked on the “My Balance” link (found at the top of every AllofMP3 page) and scrolled down where it said “Paid Sum”; it was updated with the amount I had just paid. Below that, there was the “Balance” field, which also listed the same amount.

To make things clear (just in case): “Paid Sum” (which is written “Payed Sum” in their page — more on such spelling errors at the “Drawbacks” section of this article) is the total of all the money you have given to AllofMP3 (not just for the last transaction, but for all the transactions, so if you gave them 10 bucks twice, this field will read “$20″). “Balance” is the amount of money left to your account (as you download songs, this amount decreases).

Since I hadn’t downloaded any songs yet, and this was my first transaction, the “Balance” and “Paid Sum” fields had equal values.

A Couple of Words on the Encoding Formats and Pricing Scheme

Besides the free selection of albums which, as I mentioned above, is very small and certainly doesn’t cover any of the latest releases, the material you’ll find in AllofMP3 will carry either the “Online Encoding” (OE) label, or the “Online Encoding Exclusive” (OEex) one.

I should note that none of the files you download from AllofMP3 come with DRM restrictions. So, you don’t have to worry about Jobs going up on stage and saying “we are reducing the number of times a user can burn the same playlist onto CDs from ten to seven” because “we listened to the labels quite a bit”, or basically having someone telling you what you can or can’t do with your files.

OE albums are stored in AllofMP3’s servers as 384Kbps (”Free Format“) MP3 files. Should you decide to download tracks from these albums, AllofMP3 pops up a window (more on that later) asking you to choose one of the following formats to encode your tracks-to-download to:

• MP3 (codecs: LAME or Blade — quality: CBR/ABR/alt-preset switches)
• WMA (codecs: WMA7/WMA8/WMA9 — quality: CBR/CBR one-pass/CBR two-pass/Quality-based VBRAudio Mode/Bit Rate-based VBR Audio Mode)
• Ogg Vorbis (quality: CBR/Quality-Based CBR)
• MPEG-4 (codec: MPEG-4 AAC — quality: CBR/VBR Quality Selection)
• MPC (codec: Musepack MPC — quality: Radio/Standard/Extreme/Insane/Braindead)

AllofMP3 has a help page on their website, giving a rough overview on these formats.

That is one key difference between AllofMP3 and the iTunes Music Store, or any other online music store for that matter. You get to choose the format and the quality of your music downloads.

A note though that since your OE downloaded files are transcoded (i.e. not encoded from the original source, but from a lossy format — 384kbps MP3 files in our case), the end result is not the best it could be. If you don’t own a pair of $100+ headphones, or a set of super-expensive speakers (and a sound-proof room), you won’t notice a single difference. Try it out for yourself, and make your own judgements. (And let’s not kid ourselves, the iTMS’ 128Kbps AAC files,even though they’re encoded from the original source, are not an audiophile’s joy either.)

Each OE download costs $0.01/MB, that is a cent per megabyte (UPDATE: as of January 15th, 2005 the rate has been doubled to $0.02/MB). The sum is deducted from the user’s balance only after the download has been completed. Assuming you go for an MP3 –alt-preset standard (probably the best option for MP3 files, though not exactly useful in the case of transcoding) file which averages around 4-5MB, you’ll pay $0.08-$0.10. Compared to the iTMS’ $0.99 per track. Going that way, $10 buys you around 100-125 tracks in AllofMP3, compared to 10 tracks in the iTMS.

OEex albums are the reason why AllofMP3 rocks, and what actually motivated me to join the service. These albums are stored in AllofMP3’s servers in their original lossless format (copy of original audio CD data in the format PCM/44.1KHz/16bit, as indicated in the bottom note in this help page). Should you decide to download tracks from OEex albums, the AllofMP3 pop-up window gives you the following encoding formats to choose:

• MP3 (codecs: LAME/Blade — quality: CBR/ABR/alt-preset switches)
• WMA (codecs: WMA7/WMA8/WMA9 — quality: CBR/CBR one-pass/CBR two-pass/Quality-based VBR Audio Mode/Bit Rate-based VBR Audio Mode)
• Ogg Vorbis (quality: CBR/Quality-Based CBR)
• MPEG-4 (codec: MPEG-4 AAC — quality: CBR/VBR Quality Selection)
• MPC (codec: Musepack MPC — quality: Radio/Standard/Extreme/Insane/Braindead)
• Lossless (formats: Monkey’s Audio Lossless/OptimFROG Lossless/FLAC Lossless/PCM Wave/WMA9 Lossless)

Once again, a rough overview on these formats can be found here.

It’s basically like the menu that comes with OE downloads, with the additional option for lossless encoding (original CD quality, in slightly smaller than the original PCM Wave sizes. As AllofMP3 says for that option:

Performing this order you get an exact copy of the tracks from the original compact disc. You may burn these tracks on CD-R and get an exact copy of the original audio CD.

Even if you’re not interested in the lossless formats, there are always the lossy ones. If you check the “Use original audio-CD data as the encoding source” option, your files are encoded from the original source (read: they’re not transcoded as your OE purchases, thus they sound better). You have to check that option to go into OEex mode. If you proceed with your order (read: choose a lossy format) without selecting that option, you’re basically downloading a OE (transcoded) file. I hope this is clear.

Each OEex download costs $0.02/MB, that is two cents per megabyte (UPDATE: since the January 15th doubling on the OE rates, an OEex MB costs the same as a OE MB). Unlike the OE way, the sum necessary for payment is immediately blocked at your balance (read: you’re paying for the track the minute you place that order, not after the download has completed).

Still the price is too small to pay. Remember, you’re paying for a non-transcoded file, encoded at the format of your choice, at the quality you select. And it’s DRM-free.

Assuming you go for an MP3 –alt-preset standard (which is highly-advisable when downloading OEex files since this produces the best sounding MP3 files at an optimum filesize — read: presets extreme and insane are ridiculous overkills in 99.9% of the cases) file which averages around 6-7MB, you’ll pay $0.06-$0.07. Going that way, $10 buys you around 140-165 tracks in AllofMP3, compared to 10 tracks in the iTMS.

Choosing the Songs

Click on the “Music Catalogue” link (existing at the top of every page). You get to choose between “Music“, “Movie Soundtracks“, “Game Soundtracks” (?!) and “Instrumental Music“. It’s worth noting that those last three categories have a fairly limited selection. You can also check new music (and download, if available) from the latest charts (US Top 100 Albums, US Top 50 Singles, UK Top 75 Albums, UK Top 75 Singles, Germany Top 100 Albums, France Top 50 Albums, Digital Top 10, MTV Top 20), and the local (AllofMP3) charts (Top 50 Songs, Top 50 Albums, Top 50 Artists, Top World Bestsellers).

There is also a search engine, offering some advanced options; search for artist/album/title in a selected timespan (from year “X” to year “Y”).

For each section in the “Music Catalogue“, there is an alphabetical listing of all the artists included. Click on an artist’s name, and you’re taken to a page listing those albums of theirs that are available through AllofMP3.

Click on an album’s name, and you get a page with said album’s tracklisting. Before deciding which songs to buy, VIP members can listen to full-length 24Kbps previews of each track (the quality is crappy, but it’s meant for getting a taste of the song, and it also results in small filesizes/fast downloads); non-VIP members get to listen to the first 30 seconds of each track (again in 24Kbps quality). [Thanks to reader Joe, for pointing out that a reference to the "preview" part was missing in this review.]

With the previewing part out of the way, you’ve finally decided which songs to buy. Next to each track, there’s a checkbox. Tick those songs you wish to download, and press the “order selected songs” button at the end of the page.

The window I described in “A couple of words on the encoding formats and pricing scheme” pops-up, prompting you to choose the encoding format of choice. Press “OK”, reach a confirmation screen, “OK” again and you’re done.

In a couple of minutes (less than 2-3 minutes in most cases, but once it took ~15 minutes for a set of songs in a particular album — AllofMP3 says the more popular the album, the faster the encoding is done, probably because they cache the requests), the encoding is finished.

You get an e-mail from AllofMP3 in your mailbox, for each of the tracks you have ordered, containing a direct download link to that file. Click on it to download it immediately, or add that URI to your favorite download manager.

AllOfMP3 Explorer

There is another way to download these songs. Download and install an application called “Allofmp3 Explorer“. It’s fairly easy to setup: you can choose the download speed (by placing a cap or not), the number of simultaneous downloads, whether to download prepared (read: whose encoding is over) files automatically, the filenames of your downloaded files (e.g. Artist – Album (Year) – No. – Track), the folder for your downloaded files, and a few other options.

Allofmp3 Explorer works like this: launch the program, press the “Refresh” button to see the songs in your download queue, choose a song and press the “Start” button to resume downloading. If you wish to disconnect, you can “Pause” the download. Files in the download queue remain there for 14 days.

Allofmp3 Explorer is the recommended and most painless way to download songs from AllofMP3. UPDATE: On May 23, AllofMP3 released a beta version of Allofmp3 Explorer that contains AllofMP3’s full music catalogue and enables you to order songs directly from within the app. The announcement can be found here, the program can be downloaded from here.

That last page says that when you launch the program for the first time, you will have to download AllofMP3’s full music catalogue (7.9MB at the time of this writing). Inquiring minds would like to know: when the catalogue gets updated, will you have to download the updates only, or the full catalogue once again? I will give it a test (I’ve downloaded the app, but not installed it yet) and I’ll let you know.

Drawbacks

• Ever since they introduced “Online Encoding Exclusive” (OEex), I got the impression that this would be the only (or at least, the preferred) method of providing the latest releases (albums). Sadly, this does not seem to be the case. For every 10 albums added to AllofMP3’s library, only one or two carry the OEex label; all others are OE. (This is a rough calculation of mine, meant to give you the big picture.)
• There are no plans to relaunch their existing collection in the OEex manner, either. This is expected, since all the albums added in AllofMP3’s database come from users’ contributions (upload 500MB worth of un-available material, and they redeem you with 2×500=1000MB to download; that’s the way AllofMP3 works), so AllofMP3 doesn’t have the original CDs handy to re-encode them and have them available in their original form.
• For their MP3 encodings, they use LAME 3.93.1; while certainly better than LAME 3.92, they could have gone with LAME 3.90.3 which is the recommended and most tested LAME version. (OK, this is a minor gripe.)
• I guess that since that Sydney Morning Herald article mentioned above (”Russian site is music to the ears“) which made rounds in the blogosphere, AllofMP3 must have gotten lots of new users. I’m saying this because recently, I may get a “Too many users, please refresh your browser” message when trying to make an order. It’s a bit irritating, because one simple refresh won’t work in most cases (read: you have to wait a few minutes). It’ll be interesting (and crucial for the service’s longevity) to see how they handle this: will they add new servers soon?
• The interface needs some polishing. It’s good and easy to use, but it can get better.
• The staff certainly knows to speak English, but sometimes you get the feeling they’re not fluent enough; this can be a problem when you need to ask a question to the “Technical Support” team. Also, even if you’re using the English version of the site, you may see a couple of russian phrases (left-overs from the Russian version I suppose) around.

Conclusions

I made my complaints in the previous paragraphs, but in the end, I’m very pleased with the service.

The selection is big (though not huge and still missing some essential titles — by the way, at the time of this writing, AllofMP3 had “over 2.5TB of music, 22497 albums of 7192 singers, 282509 compositions, over 19867 hours of continuous listening!”). For now, the downtime (as defined in drawback #4) is limited (let’s hope it doesn’t get bigger though, cause that could be a problem). Having the ability to choose the encoding format of your ordered tracks is a very powerful feature, which I doubt we’ll see anywhere else. Add that to the fact that the encodings are pretty fast, and the prices are low, and you’ve got a winner.