I was under the impression that AllofMP3 was already well known in the circles of those interested in ways to get music from the Web. It seems though, that lots of them only found out about the service recently, after a recent article by the Sydney Morning Herald (”Russian site is music to the ears“).
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:
- using a credit/debit card (VISA/MasterCard/Eurocard, Dinners Club, JSB, Union Card)
- using PayPal (which I guess is the recommended for maximum security, but this option disappears often)
- 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)
- 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:
- 500 Mb - $5
- 1 Gb - $10
- 1.5 Gb - $15
- 2.5 Gb - $25
- 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.
