Well, it seemed to be still up and runnin on 9/5, so hopefully it will continue to operate in its current form for some time to come. The RIAA needs to get its head out of its ass once and for all and realize that thier actions are only taking more and more money away from the artists they claim to represent. Instead of performing market research and performing cost/benefit, break-even, and trending analysis to come up with a reasonable price point for selling mp3’s online, they use thire resources to shut down anyone who IS coming up with good alternatives. Consumers will NEVER buy enough tracks at 99, 89, or even 79 cents to generate the income they think they should be getting. I would suspect that if iTunes and Rhapsody started selling tracks for closer to 25-30 cents per track, thier revenues would skyrocket! I will not even look at those sites until they approach that prices point or lower, and I’m pretty certain there are millions out there of the same mind set.
On a side note, I did notice that audiostore.ru is effectively done for. Last nite I surfed through thier site and found that they have essentially no major/signed artists left on thier site. Plus, the cost per song is now 8 RUR (about 35-40 cents). I can’t see anyone buying unknown artist;s tracks for that price, so I think that site will be shut down within a few weeks. Luckily I only had about $4 left on my balance there.
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