Offmessage

Replace “Ubisoft” with “any traditional media that has, thus far, failed to ‘get it’” and one animated gif pretty much sums up the current state of play:

Argh. Pandora goes quiet outside the US. Not quite yet, but since they’ve never actually been legal outside the US this statement that they are going to proactively stop access from outside the US is sad news indeed. The music industry really is a bitch to deal with. Kids, just don’t sign that record contract, regardless of the amount of coke/boys/girls/horses* they throw at you. There are better ways to get coke/boys/girls/horses* than selling your soul to satan.

* Delete as applicable

This time they’re taking on the ISPs – Danish telco forced to block access to allofmp3.com. I can’t help but feel that this is a little like the record industry sticking its finger in the dyke, but if they keep it up it’s going to get very annoying for us committed customers.

I wondered how long it would take before the major players got pushed into doing something… It’s been a long time since you could use PayPal to pay for tracks from AllOfMp3.com, and now it’s been announced that you won’t be able to use Visa or Mastercard, either. Luckily I just topped up my credit, but I’m worried how I’m going to top it up next time…

My favourite site launches a new service – Free tunes through a custom player. Mint. (I assume the irony of AllOfMp3 using DRM surely hasn’t escaped them)

Fascinating article over at TechCrunch about allofmp3.com, which includes this fascinating sentence:

AllofMP3 has become the center of attention in major trade negotiations between the U.S. and Russia, and appears to be the only thing stopping Russia�s entry into the World Trade Organization.

As I’ve frequently said to anyone who’ll listen allofmp3 has set the bar for the music industry. If your service is less convenient to search (e.g. torrents) or use (e.g. DRM) or more expensive (e.g. iTunes et al) then people will not use it. And don’t tell me that your business can’t survive on $4 for a full album of CD quality mp3. We all know it can.

At first glance this looks like a good idea:

Universal Music Group is to bring no-frills CDs to the UK in a bid to match the iTunes Music Store’s price point. The scheme targets old, back-catalogue releases rather than new or recent titles.

Surely this is simply a fancy remarketing of the classic mid-price format that we’ve been used to for years? If they can bring the price down along the way that would be nice too, but let’s not forget that if you really want no frills content you have allofmp3. Now *that* is no frills, no packaging and no DRM.

I guess it’s worth pointing out that I’ve started using allofmp3 heavily. I can’t help it. If I hear a track that I like (Benzie Box by Danger Doom, for example; now that is a bassline) I can get the entire album for 70p. 99p per song? With DRM? Er. No ta.

BPI gets go ahead to sue allofmp3.com

I do hope they lose.

Edit: On reflection it seems clear that a) they will lose and b) even if they won it would be impossible to uphold. The only real question therefore is how much of allofmp3′s resources can they tie up, and will it be enough to do any damage?

At least temporarily…

Swedish police raided 10 different locations in Sweden and seized servers in a massive crackdown on torrent site Piratebay.org today. [...] Judging from posts on several of the large Swedish newspaper forums, many people are outraged over the raid, not because the Piratebay was closed down, but because of the waste of taxpayers money and police time, when there are other more important crimes to solve.

It’s amazing what offering a service people actually want can lead to, isn’t it? Perhaps the music industry should take a different tack towards allofmp3.com. Particularly when 3 days’ downtime doubles their traffic for fear of the site being shut down. I’ve only just overcome my fear of giving a semi-legit Russian web site my credit card details, but the results have been fantastic. As long as I don’t start seeing lots of weird transactions on my card then this is the service for me….