We’ve got one question for you guys, if there’s already iTunes that can basically supply your music needs with a wide variety of artist selection as well as genres to choose from, then why would you opt for other legal music or mp3 download services? Well there’s the issue of content limitations, with iTunes being a very mainstream service, there might be instances that you can’t find your music there. Though if you’re an uprising musician, you’d place your pieces on iTunes for more exposure. So yeah, going into circles, why choose another one such as iomoio? Let this review help.
Okay, again we’ll make things clear. iomoio is very legal, you can’t just download mp3s and place them everywhere.
Iomoio.com respects the copyrights and other intellectual property rights of others and requests that the people who use its services do the same. If you believe your work has been reproduced or used in another way that constitutes copyright infringement, you may provide a notice to our copyright agent. If you believe that your work has been copied or used and is accessible on a service provided by us in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, you may notify us…
With that said, let’s take a look shall we?
Accounts
Being a paid service, it’s mandatory that you create an account with them. Unlike other site registrations, creating an account here is pretty simple, you don’t have to place any credit card information yet, just a valid email address among a few and you’re good Once logged in, additional sections appear to help you make your purchase. You can also sometimes find some discount codes for iomoio here.
In order to purchase music from the site, you must first “add money” to your account. Upon registration, a typical account has $0 and you must manually add funds to buy music. As seen in the image above, there are three ways in which you can do this. On top is of course though credit cards. Their credit card form is just like any form you can find in any other online store. Just give your numbers and you’re set. It would have been better though if they also had PayPal options as some may not want to give their card credentials just like that. Site security is provided by thawte. Head onto the link provided to learn more about them.
You can add money through 4 denominations: $16, $32, $64 and $96. The greater you add, the greater the bonus. As seen above, adding $96 worth also give you $96 worth of bonus credit so that’s buying 2 for the price of 1 and so forth.
The other two methods are quite similar. There the Gift Certificate where you’ll place a certain code to avail discounts and other deals that the site has. This is also the same with Redeeming a Pin Code where you enter a code and you’ll be receiving a certain amount depending on it. Once money is added, click on the “Balance” link on top and you’ll see how much you have for your purchases. It’ll also tell you how much you have spent and how much remains, pretty nifty. There’s also a Download section where you can keep track of your purchases.
Music Selection
The site has quite a selection here, as seen above, they have more than 56,000 artists in their catalogue. From the most popular to the most mundane.
Here is a typical artist page where you’ll see all the albums released and their prices. Typical prices for albums, yes albums, range from $3 to $0.80, that’s pretty cheap if you ask us. If you only wanted selected songs from the album, you can click on the album name and the tracklist is given, you can buy individual songs. Consequently, you can buy multiple singles by ticking on the checkboxes to the left and clicking the buy button below. Now returning to the artist pages, beside the price column is the bitrate column. For music services like these, you’d wanted to have the best MP3 quality as these are already compressed and very prone to sound impurities. One knock we might give to this site is the fact that they don’t have consistent bitrates in their collection. This makes us question as to where they get their MP3s. This might be a case of inconsistent rips that can mean that they do the ripping on their own or it might be the recording companies providing them with inconsistent files.
The site also has a dedicated section to that market that listens to soundtracks. Their catalogue currently has around 2100 albums ranging from Glee to Hannah Montana. Just like the artist pages, you can buy soundtracks in their entirety or just individual cuts. For multiple or full album downloads, you’ll be given a ZIP file containing all the tracks you’ve selected or MP3 files for individual purchases.
Support
For user support, they have this very extensive Help/FAQ section that discusses many, and we mean many, of the possible issues you might encounter when using the site. From creating accounts, to downloading, to security and legal issues, chances are if you have any questions, just going to the help section will most likely answer it. Though if your query is still unresolved, you can head on to the Mailbox section where you’re allowed to enter in a specific question. Or you can just directly email them though the contact details they’ve provided.
Final Thoughts
As a parting thought, this site has an advantage of having individual tracks priced at $0.16. With the site’s licensing body located outside the United States, they aren’t bounded by the $0.99 per track regulation of the RIAA, thus music is cheaper here. With that said, the site overall provides a good service to the music lovers that didn’t want to torrent their albums and wanted to help the industry. And while the site has an extensive collection, we’re a little shaky about the quality of MP3 songs they have. With bitrates from 192 to 320 kbps, many might notice differences and be turned off by the quality. But then again, their music is cheap, so this is a good alternative to iTunes, especially without the copy protection.