Allegations of piracy hit popular music Web site

Allegations of piracy hit popular music Web site - Technology - International Herald Tribune: "Rising consumer popularity is turning AllofMP3.com, a music downloading service based in Moscow, into a global Internet success story, except for one important detail: The site may well be illegal. unlike iTunes and other commercial services, songs purchased with AllofMP3's downloading software have no restrictions on copying.

Meanwhile, consumers are flocking to the site, particularly from Britain, where a survey in March ranked AllofMP3 second only to iTunes in popularity among self-described music enthusiasts surveyed by XTN Data.

Amazon.com's Web site rating service, Alexa, ranks AllofMP3 as having the 986th highest level of traffic of any site on the Web over the past three months.

Use in the United States reached 345,000 unique visitors in April, an increase of 57 percent over January, but a tiny fraction of the 19 million that used the iTunes software online, according to Comscore, a service that monitors the habits of Internet users.

A detailed evaluation and ranking of eight major music download sites in April by the U.S.-based blog Techcrunch ranked AllofMP3 ahead of iTunes. Downloaders and reviewers commend its software, called alltunes, which allows previewing entire albums before buying and offers buyers flexibility in what kind of sound format they use."