For years, people in most countries of the world have been frustrated by the inability to legally buy copyrighted music and videos. Services like iTunes, Napster, Pandora and others are available in a few selected countries only. Anywhere else you just have to go back to pirating, which of course hundreds of millions happily do. There is no guilt, as it is a decision made by the music and video companies themselves. After trying to offer them money and getting a response, that you are not welcome, you just fire up your eMule, eDonkey, Kazaa or FTP client and download the albums and movies for free. Jaanus Kase has written a good post on this as well.
Until I discovered allTunes, a new client for a legal music download service called allofmp3 based in Russia. Available to everyone in the world, using a good pricing mechanism based on downloaded file size and cheaper than Napster or iTunes. Whatever some might say, the company follows all local legal regulations. TechCrunch has a nice story on them as well.
Now should big music companies go after allMusic, and allofmp3 try to shut it down or change the pricing? No, they should learn from this company and try to follow it. This is the first music service with a task to serve their customers and use technology and practises that are right for the medium. You can not sell albums online at the price of plastic CDs, they must be cheaper. You can not cripple your music files with DRM or you will just frustrate your users.
I see no reason why anyone should continue using iTunes or Napster for their music downloads.
Try out the new service and show the big music companies the direction to follow.