Cheap MP3 Site Shuts Down, Keeps Users’ Cash, Blames Russian SOPA

[shamu726]

A thorn in the side of the western music industry, there are dozens of Russia-based online stores that sell music for a fraction of the regular mainstream price. At less than 10 cents per track it’s easy to see how these domains have gained traction but during the past few days things have become particularly expensive for users of one such site. Citing problems caused by Russia’s new anti-piracy law, LegalSounds.com has just closed down – and taken all their members’ money with them.

There’s no shortage of ways to obtain music online for free, but surprisingly there are plenty of people who will pay hard cash to obtain MP3s, even though they aren’t buying them from official sources.

For well over a decade there have been big sites, mainly hosted in Russia or Ukraine, that allow their users to download music for a fraction of the prices quoted by outlets such as iTunes. Historically the sites claimed protection under licensing from the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society (ROMS) but that has always been a controversial assertion. Few if any pay money to western labels.

One of the most famous, AllofMP3.com, generated dozens of news headlines around 2005 and even became a political issue when the United States suggested that Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization would be threatened by the site’s existence.

On August 22 2012 and after 19 years of waiting, Russia became the 156th member of the WTO but despite complaints from the U.S., dozens of similar sites continue to operate in Russia and across the border in Ukraine.

Although many have come under pressure from payment providers, most still seem able to take money, even from giants Visa and Mastercard. Previously sites have chosen to charge a few cents per track (around $1.00 per album) but more recently the trend is to offer unlimited music for a set price. Others allow users to charge their accounts with payments of around $25.00 each in order to spend those balances over time.

One of the sites offering this model was LegalSounds. Online since 2005 and launched with a campaign that announced “The end of peer-to-peer networks is near!”, the site offered MP3s for around $0.09 each. But while this may have worked well for a while, the party is now over.

“We are terribly sorry, but due to recent changes in Russian Federation legislation (Anti-Piracy Law, which came into force August 1), we can’t continue offering you our service,” LegalSounds announced in a brief statement.

“Thanks for all of you, who supported legalsounds.com through these years. We hope to come back with something new.”

It’s far from clear why LegalSounds felt an urgent need to close down. Thus far no application has been made to the Russian authorities to have content removed from other MP3 sites under the new legislation (it only covers movies and TV shows) and there is currently no indication that other sites intend to follow.

In the meantime and for the customers hit by the closure, the outlook isn’t good. LegalSounds’ Facebook page appears to have been abandoned, leaving behind only furious ex-customers who seem to have lost all the money they had in their accounts. While there are threats ranging from class action to murder, few users of the site appear to have read LegalSounds’ terms and conditions.

“Only payments made from credit cards are refundable. The entire amount of transaction is subject to be refunded. Partial refunding is not allowed. Refund can’t be provided when customer used part of the balance,” the ToS on the now-dead site used to read.

Whether this closure will have a chilling effect on the cheap MP3 market remains to be seen. That will largely depend on whether other sites follow suit.

Source: TorrentFreak

[smallhagrid]

That was a good site and I used it - but had a silly problem with it - I got so much music from it that I ran out of ideas after getting loads of tracks and whole albums - and still had credit left over.

Here's how I see it:

- I expected they'd shut down so this is no surprise.

- The stuff was so amazingly cheap that I feel no loss from it.

- Even at twice the price they charged it would have been cheap.

- I used all but maybe $8 of my 'credit' there, no big whoop to lose that much.

A side-note:

This does make a point about Russian cyber-crime, and my 1st exposure to that was when Kaspersky blacklisted a huge number (millions ??) of legitimately paid users, would hear nothing from anyone, and gladly made users pay again...

Of course the Russians don't have the trade in double-dipping and outright theft cornered - if you want to see an example of getting robbed outright in short order, just find any site offering any service for a cheap price and which says they are heavy-duty religious folks; this is the most common ploy on the planet.

I learned this two different times, years apart=>

1st was when I paid a local (dial-up) ISP for a year of great/cheap service - and after it went belly up 6 months later discovered the owner was a bible-thumper with a history of such cheats already.

(Some funnies from that...the owner's name was Sal Lizard and the service was called WebLizard - and it was all truly reptilian !!!)

2nd was when I paid for a year of great/cheap hosting offered by 2IP.com, which was on a Christian Mission to provide great hosting for cheap - and I got suckered into it.

That time had a better ending though as I literally harased the owner, threatened to report his thefts to the 3-letter boys as a foreign national - and he refunded my money, but then escaped with most everyone else's money only to reappear later offering another online service for cheap....!

[AndyRod]

possible this mp3 site is replacement? I have used legalsound also for long time and now searching for alternative, anyone tried this one?

[Avonlea]

I didn't know about this site at all, but it is sad that it closed down.