RutunesDigital Music, Computers, Internet…

Just a small reminder that Rutunes is now using Feedburner to manage its RSS feeds, which means you have a ton of ways to subscribe.

I have also added an option to subscribe via email notification, which you can submit via the form on the right hand side.

Enjoy.

As what could be a new change that all shops might follow, MusicMP3 is the latest sheep, silently converted their prices to Euros a few days ago.

As confirmed by a moderator at Aom3, MusicMP3 didn’t follow MP3Fiesta’s awful decision to also convert users balances as well, keeping it nicely relative with the new change in music prices.

[MusicMP3]

MP3SkyLine has so far, had a calm and solid recovery to near 100% functional service. Reception has been very good and I don’t think MP3SkyLine could ask for anything more. Their free credit give-away to aom3’s mailing list readers was one of the smoothest and most successful give-aways, with a 99% success rate. So its now time to rate MP3SkyLine on their recovery process, do you think MP3SkyLine is stable enough and worth to recommend to a friend or family? Vote here:

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[MP3SkyLine]

With iTunes being the market leader in digital music shops and loved by many, it goes without saying that iTunes has its fair amount of critics. With its high price structure, stubborn software functionality and presumptuous product design, people cannot justify paying a high price for music bundled with restrictions.

So many digital music shoppers are turning to other sources, specifically Russian and eastern European based online digital music shops. Countries such as Russian And Ukraine have copyright laws that are not updated to cover digital media, allowing many digital shops a foundation for selling music at ridiculously low prices without any restrictions. It’s a strong consumer demand that Apple chooses ignores as long as it continues to print money and maintain a dominant share of the market.

But it won’t be long till many of these European shops gain more exposure and attract more users. Inevitably it was also get unfavourable legal attention from western countries. If the growth trend continues, three speculative outcomes are likely to happen.
1. Music industry representative organisations will take legal action and eventually a case will follow through in stating the legality of these shops. Even after all the commotion and media hype of allofmp3.com, still no jurisdiction has simply stated whether these music digital shops are legal.
2. These shops continue to operate, while American and other western countries continue to bully credit card companies, e.g. Visa (an American company) into banning transactions on these shops.
3. An unlikely outcome, but most favourable among everyone, Other drm-free music shops gain enough market share to scare Apple into making changes. Apple is will be forced to listen to what the consumer wants and drop their controlling ways, changing their business model to compete with eastern European music shops.

So just how good, or bad are these Eastern-European music shops? Here is a small list of the cheapest digital music shops on the internet.

1. Legalsounds.com
Price per Track: $0.09
Catalogue: n/a
Other Shops of Similar Price: none

2. Iomoio.com
Price per Track: $0.10
Catalogue: 900,000+ songs
Other Shops of Similar Price: none

3. Soundsbox.com
Price per Track: $0.14
Catalogue: n/a
Other Shops of Similar Price: Millisong.com

4. Lavamus.com
Price per Track: $0.15
Catalogue: 2,500,000+ Songs
Other Shops of Similar Price: MusicMP3.ru, MP3VA.com, MP3.ua

5. MP3sale.ru
Price per Track: $0.16
Catalogue: 1,900,000+ songs
Other Shops of Similar Price: none

# iTunes Music Store
Price per Track - $0.99
Catalogue - 8,000,000+ songs

As MP3SkyLine continue on their road to full service functionality, they are pulling all the stops along the way to entice people back to buying music from them. It shouldn’t be too hard for MP3SkyLine, as with an impressive music catelogue and well designed music interface, any extras will only further boost their recovery road back to the top.

And one of those extra stops is giving away free music credit. Although details are not yet finalised, it is confirmed that MP3SkyLine will be giving away free music credit to the Aom3 Freebie Mailing List readers.

So make sure your signed up with MP3SkyLine and the Aom3 Freebie Mailing List.

Yes this is a couple of days late, but won’t be long till I am back home and on top of things

It seems as if things are turning up for a few DRM-free music shops. With MP3sale close to 100% restoration, another shop who was once hugely popular among the aom3 community members has come back from the dead. After a very long time of silence and nearly completely out of communication with anyone, MP3SkyLine came out of nowhere on the 1st August to announce on Aom3.org that they are back online.

yes, it’s been a really long time. i am not really sure how many of you will be happy, but i am obliged to make an accouncement: we are fully up.

What does it mean?

You can read the full statement here

It will be the next couple of weeks of how MP3SkyLine handles this, that decides whether they will be trusted again by many of their deserted MP3SkyLine customers. They have started on a good foot, by updating their download software, which gives free movie downloads and a compensation package to their customers. Details are all in the aom3 posted statement.

[MP3SkyLine]

Many people have emailed me asking where the reviews are for music shops such as MP3Sale and MP3Fiesta. As Rutunes is now a blog, all the original hand-written reviews have now been moved to Aom3.org, the community site for digital music shops as well as a resource hot-spot for digital music buying.

So consider this post as a shout-out for the information that aom3 has to offer.

The music shop reviews section in aom3 offers some truely fantastic extensive reviews on music shops, written by members of aom3.The reviews section is very helpful and you can see what ratings members of aom3 have given to various shops.

Highlighted Reviews
MP3Sale review
MP3Fiesta review
Lavamus review
Legalsounds review

[Aom3 Music Shop Reviews]

Aom3 has also put up a detailed comparison table for all music shops, where you can sort shops by price, features, payment options etc.. Very helpful when you want to find a shop with a specific payment option, e.g. paypal.
[Aom3 Comparison Table]

As well as the strong community that powers aom3.org, there is a freebies mailing list, that sends out free gift certificates and information on bonues updates for various shops. Aom3 have already achieved in sending out 500+ free gift certificates for Lavamus.com. Its free to sign up and your email address will not be shared out to any 3rd party orgnisation.
[Aom3 Freebie Mailing List]

So these are just a few gems on what Aom3 has to offer. Feel free to check it out.

[Aom3.org Forums]

As I am currently on holiday, I am a bit slow in getting the latest news out. It looks like MP3sale are keep customers very happy with their 100% balance-bonus activation code, which basically means a doubled value of your balance with the help of a gift code. Instructions below:

Bonus code can be activated by ANY user, registered prior to July, 1st.
You can activate this bonus code only once within one month, starting from today. (So, the last day you’ll be able to activate it - will be 21, August 2008)
In case, if your current balance is lower than your last real deposit - you’ll recieve bonus equal to your last deposit.

After activation of this bonus code, your balance will be doubled up.

The bonus code is DOUBLE

You can activate it from “Add To Balance -> Bonus Code/Pin Code activation” - just enter “Double” in the “code” form and press “Continue”. Your balance will be updated within 5-10 minutes.

What will be the result of this for the business of MP3sale? Well just from using common sense, customers prior to july are very unlikely to make another deposit for sometime after using the bonus code, unless MP3Sale has statistics showing that those customers are regular downloaders who are likely to do a very large top-up, preventing a top-up dry period. The other result is the exposure and building of their brand image. This compensation deal has shown MP3sale cares about their customers enough to offer a very generous bonus top-up and I wouldn’t be surprised if people forgot about MP3sale’s previous downtime troubles anytime soon.

Saying all that, I would like to thank MP3sale for my new very high €xxx balance.

[MP3sale]

As we all love gadgets but don’t have all the money in the world, saving up is the aganosing process that we all have to experience.

What im saving up for is an undstated and well priced ‘Home Theatre PC’ by overclockers.co.uk

For £880, this is what you get:

- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz Quad Core Processor
- Asus P5E-VM Intel G35 “PCI-Express” (Socket 775) DDR2 Motherboard
- ATI Radeon 3870 XT 512MB GDDR4 HDMI Graphics Card
- Corsair 4GB (2×2GB) DDR2 PC6400 Dual Channel Memory Kit
- 1000GB Hitachi Deskstar 16MB Cache SATA-2 Hard Drive
- Pioneer BDC202 5x Blu-Ray Player and 12×12 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter
- Creative Extreme Audio 7.1CH Sound Card
- 10/100 LAN
- Antec Fusion Media Centre Case
- Antec NeoHE 430W ATX Power Supply
- Netgear WG311 54Mbps Wireless PCI Network Card
- Front & Rear Firewire IEEE1394 Connectors
- Front & Rear USB2.0 Ports
- Front Headphone & Microphone Ports
- 1yr Onsite Collect & Return Warranty (Can collect from any address (UK Mainland ONLY) and same day collection possible if requested before 11am)

Wait till you see the product photo…

[Product Page Via Overclockers.co.uk]

One thing Musicmp3 is good for, is that module in the right hand side of their homepage, ‘Most Popular’. If your like me and keep up with the UK Top 40 or US Billboard Charts, then you should consider bookmarking MusicMP3 for checking out the latest main stream artists releases. New releases always appear on Musicmp3 very quickly or even before their release date and that handy little ‘Most Popular’ box makes it that much easier.

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