Russian Music Site Offers Downloads For Less Than Five Cents

If you have purchased music from one of the many legal online music services, you already know the average tune will cost you about a dollar. But a Russian music site is claiming that it has developed a way in which music lovers can legally download music, at a cost of less than a nickel per tune.

AllofMP3.com charges by the megabyte, offering 1MB of downloads for just one cent. You buy bulk download capacity, and $10 would be enough to fill a gigabyte's worth of space on your hard drive. AllofMP3.com stores the music files in an uncompressed form, then encodes them in the format and bit rate you prefer.

The site was recently reviewed by Sydney Morning Herald reporter Charles Wright, who claimed to have to have downloaded 968 tracks without a technical hitch and without any unexpected charges on his credit card.

The site claims to be legal, having licensed its content from the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. But a 'terms of use' notice on the site warns that visitors "agree with the fact that you are not able to use and even to download audio and video materials from Allofmp3.com catalogue if it is in the conflict with legislation of your country."

While it's unclear whether the site is indeed legal for use by U.S. citizens, a recent visit to the site showed that more than 2,000 users from around the world were currently using the service.