Cheap MP3s Continue To Flow Through Eastern Europe

Those of you who possess the capacity to remember things may recall the Russian site AllOfMP3, which sold MP3s for dirt-cheap prices to those people who weren’t wary of handing their Diners Club cards over to servers in the former Soviet Union. That site was shut down in the summer of 2007, but it would seem that a year later, a successor has popped up: Meet MP3Count.com, which is a project of the Ukranian company «Best Music» Ltd., and which claims to remunerate artists under a copyright statute that has a lot of letters in its name–even though it only costs users $2 or $3 to download an album. But is MP3Count.com really that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, even though it’s got the usual suspects slobbering over its low price points?

• Its catalog is somewhat lacking. Among the albums on its new releases page are Kylie Minogue’s X (US release date: Nov. 26, 2007) and the Killers’ Sawdust (US release date: Nov. 13, 2007). The top albums include Timbaland’s Shock Value and Kate Nash’s Made Of Bricks; it claims to have “the largest on-line music collection,” but that collection apparently stopped amassing new releases in late 2007.

• Is a Ukranian store selling MP3 albums for under $5 really all that big a deal when Amazon MP3 is discounting just as deeply? See the just-out Paper Trail by T.I., which is on sale now for $3.99! And that album is, like, new and stuff.

The bottom line: US residents who are savvy enough–not to mention, blase about handing over their credit card to Eastern Europe–to use MP3Count are probably getting all their music for free anyway, and they’re probably the types of people who would turn up their nose at the idea that this so-called “music source” didn’t have the latest hits. And other bargain-hunters would probably just head over to Amazon MP3, or, you know, buy the CDs. (Because most people who still buy music actually opt for CDs these days. Of course, this might all change as the economy falls further into collapse, but for now, it’s the hard truth.)

MP3Count [Official site, at least until it gets taken over by the RIAA and turned into a honeypot]