Review by: Museekster
MP3Sale,
a Russian site with a great looking design and over 1.5 million tracks in store.
Tracks cost $0.15 per track. A complete album is paid per track
but with a 20% discount. They accept credit cards
and a few other methods like wire transfer.
MP3Sale has signed agreements with the Russian copyright
organization FAIR. This entitles this service to legally offer music by all
artists and from all labels.
You can listen to a 30 second preview of every track using the built-in flash player.
Users can comment all albums and get in touch with other users at the MP3Saleforum.
Catalogue
All files are offered in MP3 format and a good deal of them are encoded with a variable bitrate
using the excellent LAME encoder and the alt-preset standard switch.
This produces an excellent sound quality practically undistinguishable from the
original cd. But you will come across other bitrates. Too bad the filenames are like, 04_-_This_Is_A_Song.mp3,
but the ID3 tags are properly filled so automated renaming can be done with a tag
editor.
MP3Sale has one of the best catalogues. Even the singles are present, with the
usual special remixes.
Recently released albums appear soon.
Price
Songs cost $0.15 per track, but when you order an album you will get a 20%
discount on the total price of the
tracks.
Download credit can be bought using major credit cards starting from $20,00.
Investing a higher
account may give you a bonus up to 100%. Be sure to check their regular special
offers.
Legality
Many question the legality of the Russian services. Lengthy discussions on this subject can be found all over the Internet. The bottom line is that the Russian services are probably legal under current Russian law. Using these services from outside Russia could be legal as well. More information can be found on this page.
Pros
- low pricing;
- high download speeds;
- great sound quality
- no DRM copy protections;
- compatible with all portable players;
- good catalogue with all major artists;
- recently released albums are available;
- single releases are included in the catalogue
- nice and easy to use interface
Cons
- MP3 only;
- No download manager;
- Files are not properly named;
Conclusion
MP3Sale is a one of the best resources for music. The catalogue is
impressive. Too bad MP3Sale lacks
advanced features like online encoding and a download manager.
Downloading is fast but you have to download every single file separately. It is
advised to use a download manager for downloading whole albums. For those who like clean filenames a
renaming tool is needed.