Idolator

AllOfMP3.com was put to sleep Wednesday, when the Russian music-downloading site's owners announced that the company was changing its offerings from dirt-cheap MP3s to free, lower-quality streams of songs.

The six-year-old site, which was notorious among Internet users for charging less than $3 for full-length album, will switch to a model that claims to be free; however, users will have to listen to the "free" songs using a proprietary player and they will not be able to download the files unless they pay. AllofMP3's owners are looking to switch to an ad-supported revenue model as a result of this shift, although it is unknown at this time whether users will actually connect the terms "AllOfMP3" and "DRMed up the wazoo."

AllOfMP3's demise was hastened by the credit-card company Visa International, which stopped accepting transactions from the site earlier this month. It is unknown at this time whether AllOfMP3 users who paid with Visa are now collectively kicking themselves for giving their credit card information to a shady Russian Web site in the first place.

Visa halts its service for AllOfMP3.com [News.com]
MP3 Web site in Russia goes from cheap to free amid legal battles [International Herald Tribune]
Previously: Russians Just As Hesitant As The Rest Of The World About Paying For "Sam's Town"