RutunesDigital Music, Computers, Internet…

As taken from this aom3 thread, here are this months music shop bonus offers.

MP3Fiesta.com
Recommend-a-friend referral scheme. Get a friend to sign up an account via your url and you will get a $50 bonus on your own balance. Click here.

$100 USD + 25% Bonus ($25 For Free)
$50 USD + 20% Bonus ($10 For Free)
$40 USD + 15% Bonus ($6 For Free)
$30 USD + 10% Bonus ($3 For Free)

MP3sale.ru
€30 (+ €10 FREE)
€50 (+ €50 FREE)
€100 (+ €50 FREE)

MusicMP3.ru (e-gold)
€29.9 + 10% Bonus (€3 FOR FREE)
€39.9 + 15% Bonus (€6 FOR FREE)
€49.9 + 20% Bonus (€10 FOR FREE)

MP3skyline.com / MP3xclusive.com
$45 USD + 33% Bonus ($15 For Free)
$35 USD + 15% Bonus ($5 For Free)

GoMusic.ru
75 USD +10% bonus
90 USD +15% bonus
120 USD +20% bonus

Legalsounds
USD $39 and get 50 free songs
USD $50 and get 80 free songs
USD $100 and get 200 free songs

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

Despite free education, a free national health service and one of the best government tolerability towards immigrants in the world, living the UK isn’t that great. More importantly , UK has poor Internet speeds compared to Eastern Asian countries,  late in getting the latest movies, music and technology. But one thing UK people are happy about, is the weakening dollar. With everyone flocking to American shopping websites and eBay USA, it means UK people are happy to enjoy buying products from USA when the price is much lower than in the UK.

This also applies to digital music shops. At the lowest price of $0.09 per track offered by LegalSounds, that means (approx) £0.045 for UK customers. At an average of 12 tracks per album, it comes to £0.54 per album. Play.com offers albums at around £6.99 each, so its common for UK customers to be pleased to live in the UK for once, as the find their digital music from shops like MP3Sale, Legalsounds, MP3Fiesta etc..