TechoLiO
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Summary

Now this one is tricky. This is a russian site with what seems to good to be true, and maybe it is. They offer songs based on the cost of the download size, only .01 per meg. That means an 8 meg song would only cost 8 cents. An album for a buck?

They are in russia, and I've seen them in the past and assumed it was a pirate site. Well they are licensed to do this, don't ask me the details, it's hard to find!

That aside, from a technical standpoint it's impressive. You put some money in your account and it's subtracted from as you download. What's great is that many of the choices allow you to choose your encoding in wma, mp3, ogg or aac, with your own bitrate etc. A little popup asks you, and it encodes. You get an email when they are done (not too long). Then you download.

Using the web site is not great (clicking all those songs) but they have a little windows application you can download that will download them in batches for you, and you even get correct id3 or other tags, and directory placement. Very good.

By far this is the best site, but also controversial. I haven't been able to find out how much the record companies and/or artist get from these arrangements. In what little I've found, I gather they are licensed by the government which has some kind of boilerplate deal with the record companies. But that's purely a guess.

Right now unless there is some law out there, it looks legit. If it weren't I think the RIAA or others would have done something about it. In fact there is not one mention of it on the RIAA site. So better use it before another consumer crazy law gets passed that makes it illegal or puts a huge tarrif on this.

Pros: Price, encoding, price!

Cons: None other than the possibility of legal issues arising.

Costs

Just .01 per megabyte downloaded. If you encode them higher they are bigger and cost more. There is also a monthly 1000 song plan, but it doesn't include the variable encoding, and it seems not worth it.

File Format

Anything in wma, mp3, aac (mp4) or ogg, at bit rates up to 320 for mp3. You can pick standard lame presets or your own bitrates.

DRM Restrictions

There be none! The legal restrictions are that the songs are only for personal use and no redistribution or broadcasting.

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