JAMES SPRATT .org

Julia was cleaning out her old CDs t’other day and came across the empty case for Paul Simon’s Graceland. Excellent album that it is, I started trying to track down the tracks via both Ares, Kazaa and Limewire. P2P networks aren’t what they were. They’re littered with crap, which I understand is dropped in by the big music companies, and more often than not now, I don’t find what I’m looking for. On this occassion I found about half of them but that’s it. So I started rifling through some bulletin boards and came up with Allofmp3.com. They’re based in Russia where they obviously have different copyright laws but more importantly, different prices. You can choose which bit rate to download and which format. I’m still using mp3 as until the format wars recess, I don’t want to go chasing different formats. So you pay for how many Mbs you download.

e.g. Track 8 on Graceland is ‘Homeless’. It’s 3 minutes 48 seconds long. At 192Kbps in mp3, you pay $0.11.

The bottom line is that you pay about $1 – $2 per ALBUM! Or just the pennies per track. This is sensible pricing that will make me buy music online. I felt the need to share this with you.