The past few months I have followed a number of forum discussions about Music Download Services in Russia.

Services like Allofmp3.com, mp3.search.ru and 3mp3.ru are offering tracks from all labels and artists for prices that seem to good to be true. Songs can be downloaded for as little as $0.01 per MB.

When I first visited these sites I was convinced that this was some kind of fraud, but I have found evidence that these are completely legitimate operations.

The Russian Organization for Multimedia & Digital Systems (ROMS) has licensed the services. ROMS is a member of CISAC (www.cisac.org) - the International confederation of authors and composers societies. Under the license agreement the services pay out fees for downloaded materials. ROMS distributes the royalties to the authors. The artists do get paid.

The best service by far is Allofmp3.com. Their unique Online Encoding makes it possible to download the music in MP3, OGG, WMA, MPC or AAC, all in a variety of bit rates. All files are unprotected.

Of course the RIAA noticed this service. About two years ago they approached Russian officials to try and shut it down. The RIAA lawyers initially would not even get the time of day out of the Russian authorities. Eventually, the RIAA was told to worry about their own affairs. The RIAA inquired of Russian legal experts about pursuing a case, and they were told it would be thrown out of court immediately. That was the end of the RIAA's involvement in Allofmp3. They seem to have no authority, domestic or international, to affect Allofmp3's operations.

I know most of you hate paying for music and prefer P2P. You want to share the music you have. Here is more good news: you can also upload your albums to Allofmp3 or 3Mp3. Russian legislation allows both services to use the uploaded tracks for further distribution as long as they pay the copyrights. Amazing isn’t it. For every Mb you upload you are entitled to 2Mb of downloading.

This way we can actually help building the world’s greatest resource for music. It can be better than P2P.

What's your opinion? Is this the way to go?

Here are some links to forum discussions and reviews:
RIAA ‘s actions:
.fatwallet.com/forums
Look for Dampier's reply.

Allofmp3 review:
http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3info.htm

Allofmp3 discussion by former Emusic subscribers:
mixtape forums

Interview with Allofmp3’s content manager:
www.techimo.com/news