Bottom Line:
MP3sale will always be a personal favourite of mine. They offer a unique and wholesome experience. Every aspect from design, downloading, browsing to interaction has been carefully thought of. Catalogue may not be as diverse for the die hard music collectors out there, but it shouldn’t be a reason to stop using this great service.
Background Info
MP3sale is a big-boy shop that has been offering a solid service for some time with little unique gems that separates itself from the crowd. With over 35% of total visitors being Russian, Its an obvious popular choice among the Russians. And with over 20k visits being just US, you get an idea on how diverse their visitors are. Their servers are based in Russia, so their licensed are in accordance to FAIR and not the damned ROMS that has caused so many problems.
At the time this review was conducted
MP3sale had 300,000 customers.
User Interface
The user interface is constantly updated and its impressive to see what
mp3sale comes up with next. With an underwater style theme, it has managed to offer a complex service with a very stylish look. You start browsing music using several available options, By artist, soundtracks, compilations, genres, newly added, searching etc...
Viewing music is a very different matter, allowing you to go into the deep realms of music. Well what do I mean by that? When viewing an artist, you can browse their discovery; songs, albums, singles etc... all one page. You can also browse other artists that the artist you are currently viewing have worked with. Not only is that but there a discussion feature to chit chat with other users.
Another amusing feature is the ‘member of’ line, which displays the name of the band if the artist you are viewing is a member of a band.
As well displaying the main discovery for each artist, it also shows all songs that the artist has worked with or has been featured in with other artists. Albums are also grouped in series (great way to find compilations from the same series) a small organisation characteristic that goes a long way.
A great add-on that currently no other shop offers is the online music flash player, which streams a preview of a song, rather than having you to download anything. Even if the quality is rather poor, it proves to save time as well keep in tune of music productivity.
Catalogue
MP3sale.ru offers a very good catalogue and it satisfies well when finding the...well hard-to-find songs. Only knack I had with the catalogue is the complete range of albums per an artist. While I can’t test every single artist in the catalogue, the couple that I did sample were missing some key collections.
MP3sale.ru does a very good job of keeping their catalogue a monster library, adding around 150-200 new albums every day, with quiet days being around 20-30. A very impressive statistic.
With well known artists, the extensive range of music is quite outstanding, offering every type of single released, even it is for the same song
Pricing
The pricing is very reasonable as well is every Russian music shop out there. Songs comes at the standard average of around $0.15 per song. Because the pricing is dynamic according to the file size, I suggest you read some of threads on the forums about finding compilation songs that basically contain multiple songs in one track. A huge money saver! Average cost of an album is around $1.5. Nearly all albums contain a generous 20% discount.
Audio Formats
All songs come in the bog standard MP3 format with bit-rates ranging all over the place. Usually in 190kbps - 250kbps sector. Nearly all old albums are of very high quality. As always, there is no protection or limitation crap on any of the songs, so you can basically copy and play the song as many times as you want.
(#2 you see, I am capable of writing a review without moaning about the absence of multi-format downloading
...)
Downloading
MP3sale has done well to keep everything web-based. But you know the main problem of downloading songs from a website is? Having to right-click and download each track...urgh! Luckily
MP3sale is quick on their feet and proposed a feature that no other shop does. ‘Zip it’ is what I like to call it, which basically means; you can zip up all your songs and download them together in one file. And if you lucky, you might save time and bandwidth if files are reduced in size.
Oh and what a great feature... you have unlimited number of download attempts on purchased albums/tracks. You can come anytime later and re-download album in case if you lost it somewhere on your PC or mp3 player for example.. You don't need to pay twice for the same track.
Payment Options
There are several ways to add funds to the balance such as:
- Visa, MasterCard credit cards
- Wire transfer (WebMoney, Yandex-Money, E-Gold, Neteller, FirePay, Moneybookers)
- Bank transfer
I had no trouble filling up my balance, whether it was conducted via credit card or wire transfer, everything was done smoothly. If you have trouble filling up your balance, its probably because of your location as
mp3sale filters your options via a geo-filter. If you find yourself having problems I recommend you do a search on the aom3 forums and look for guides on how to use TOR
And there’s always some bonus program with replenishment, which means more money for you!
Conclusion
In my opinion, having competition is good. Unlike other shops
MP3sale got off their Russian bottoms and made some excellent productivity-pro features that will enhance the music-buying experience. Of course it won’t match to mp3sparks connectivity, but it sure does give a good go at it and I respect
mp3sale for having the guts.
With a huge catalogue and unique user interface, I find very little to fault with the shop. As like all shops you have to try them all and find which one you like the best. But I can assure you that whatever you choose you won’t be disappointed with
mp3sale.
Price – 94%
Payment Options – 92%
User Interface – 92%
Audio Formats – 89%
92% - Editors Choice
Click Here To Sign Up With MP3sale.ru And Receive A Free Song!
bokr
To be or not to be.......... -
03-27-2008, 09:14 AM
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