1. Yes, Virginia, there are other download services. I got onto
Lavamus (2 weeks BEFORE the latest Alltunes outage, thanx to info I read on this forum) and have been mostly satisfied. Downloading to specific folders is more tedious, and I had a technical problem that support actually responded to, but it still looks broken from here (one of many download servers unreachable). Then I also sometimes use Amazon MP3 even at the higher price (.89 - .99 US) because I can FIND things I am looking for.
2. The obscure stuff becomes less obscure. Tracks that took me YEARS to find on vinyl, and then more YEARS in digital form, sometimes pop up, unbidden, for the taking! Lowrell, the Prelude disco label, Shriekback "Jam Science" cassette, Yellow Magic Orchestra, just to name some recent ones. Even MP3Sparks/Alltunes added a lot while they were down ... such as a 38-year old eponymous album from Affinity, I couldn't believe anyone besides me had any memory of them.
3. Speaking of which, how does this old stuff get digitized? I'm assuming a number of obscure albums were never released on commercial CD. Is there a group of purists somewhere (I won't guess who their employer is!) taking analog recordings, cleaning them up and digitizing? I've done this with some of my own vinyl, but it's a pain, maybe I'm just using the wrong software.
4. I've been replenishing my AllOfMp3/MP3Sparks/Alltunes account for almost four years now, but it's been many months since the last time, I'm almost afraid to try again based on skimming some posts here. Thank goodness I've still got a decent balance left...
5. System administrators and database administrators don't like being on-call. If you don't have a service level agreement, you can't complain about downtime.
6. Having this forum is a great out-of-band communication method! I love the avatars, I tolerate the "wibble", but I don't read all of it either.