DRM-free music marketplace Amie Street is announcing its beta launch this morning. (Note: it looks like it’s having traffic issues today, but it is coming up if you’re patient.) We wrote about the company’s alpha launch and interesting demand-driven pricing model here in July. Songs uploaded by artists fluctuate in price according to demand over time. Users get recommendation tokens for each dollar they put into the system and get free credits if the songs they recommend rise in price. Artists receive 70% of sales proceeds. The company is angel funded, with one of the most notable angels being Robin Richards of MP3.com fame.
Today marks Amie Street’s official public launch as well as a site redesign. The design is still a bit rough, but some new features have been added and there is better Mac support for the interface. The new site allows advanced searching, a pop-up music player allowing users to listen to playlists of sample tracks, and Meebome accounts for real-time-chat in artist stores. Since we covered the company in July, their user base has increased to around 4,000 users. They have had a couple hundred artists participating in the alpha selling around 2,100 songs.
The band State Radio from Nettwerk, the label that publishes Sarah McLachlan, is selling music on the site. Most of the music is from independent bands but with prices as low as 2 to 10 cents for many songs and long samples available to listen to – even the very risk averse can do some looking around for music they like on the site. To be honest, I’m still looking – but I love the model. The most successful songs on the service have been by high school groups who manage to leverage their real-world connections to drive sales online. One such group, Spinlight City from Miami, has the most expensive track right now at 70 cents. Tracks top out at $0.98.
Amie Street isn’t the only company experimenting with freedom from DRM and changing price structures. See also the crowdsourced music production of Sellaband, the free listening with heavy DRM of SpiralFrog, the 77 cent tracks with DRM and 88 cent versions without from PayPlay.fm and the feature rich (plus newly funded) music browser Songbird. Music distribution is something that obviously needs some serious reworking. DRM faces growing criticism, music prices are too high and the ease of online distribution is making it clear that major labels (instead of the artists) are taking too much of the money we spend on music. I’m glad to see the release of Amie Street into public beta and hope this or some other innovative model like it finds traction with users.
Congrats to the guys at Aime St. New site design looks nice.
Congrats guys! Everything looks great. Can’t wait for this to blow up.
I’ve been using Amie St. a bit since it was first covered here. Not enough music I like yet, but the idea is great. Hope it gains more traction with more bands.
You forgot http://www.mp3tunes.com/ from mp3.com’s Michael Robinson. Allthough the site shifted focus more towards an online locker for your music, it still has quite an extensive shop where you can buy mp3’s (and thus songs without drm) for 88 cents.
Site is down…
The server is maxed out right now. We’re working as fast as we can to add more capacity and get things back up and running.
Lucas
the future is tamago…its a total intellectual property market place…where people get paid to distribute and artist make royalties from each sale…BOTH are considered money…it works like a bank; and its totally cool.
its p2p 2.0; not web2.0 though.
anyway…from a web perspective, why would anyone buy music from Amy street when you have options like iTunes, eMusic, mySpace, etc…
no one give a fuck about Tokens….this is why tamago is cool; you get cash.
Hey guys checkout Anthologyrecordings.com – they’re reissuing rare out of print music and selling it without DRM. Launching Thurs Sept 5th http://www.anth...yrecordings.com
In case I’m not the only one who wondered what “angel funded” is,
“An angel investor (business angel in Europe, or simply angel) is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for ownership equity. Unlike venture capitalists, angels typically do not manage the pooled money of others in a professionally-managed fund. However, angel investors often organize themselves into angel networks or angel groups to share research and pool their own investment capital.”
from http://en.wikip.../Angel_investor
Amie St. has a pretty sick design. An interesting article I came accross on the Digg homepage, regarding a similiar site out of Philadelphia. Interesting read, and the biz model of allowing musicians to pocket $0.80 out of $0.99 song sales is def. appealing.
Digg: http://digg.com...raid_of_Myspace
http://www.phillafunk.com
What is wacky, or interesting, is that a machine is making the markets. There is no “supply” issue, since endless copies of each track could be made. So this is
an imposed scarcity, not real scarcity that raises prices. Seems like a nice maximization of marginal revenue would be a good underlying method. Who knows.
If escaping from DRM means getting paid 10 or 20 cents per songs then you can bet that musicians will be screaming “Long live DRM!” And why not? Musicians are making a very good percentage of the sales they make from digital music stores. This shouldn’t be just about sticking it to the DRM companies. It should be about musicians getting a fair payment for their efforts while music lovers get to really own the music they buy.
Amie St. should immediately drop this whole ‘open market’ based approach to music and just sell non-DRM wrapped music at fixed prices. Markets are only worthwhile when commodities are available in limited quantities and subject to major supply and demand shifts. In the case of mp3s people will simply pay the lowest price that is set since musicians typically don’t limit the number of times a song can be downloaded.
This effort seems to have done well in getting the ink on TechCrunch but they’re definitely not doing musicians a service. In fact, their statement that “You are paid three times a year (approximately every 120 days) as long as you are owed at least $10. ” is ridiculous. Why are they holding money for themselves that is owed to musicians who sell their music? I’d send musicians to TuneCore or CD Baby long before I’d send them to this service.
I have been using Amie.st since the last article, and I have to say I love the site. It’s always had great music, and the library is always growing. The new redesign is great, especially the new music charts. Keep it up Amie.st.
I agree with Adam’s post. They have good music and it is a more interesting way to buy it. It’s more fun than iTunes or eMusic, so I hope Amie.st keeps growing.
Hey guys, site looks good, music sounds good. Can’t wait until you’re totally up and running.
ooo pretty pretty, I’m making amiest my homepage.
Amie.St may share a similar concept to some other sites, but they have some really great innovations. I personally love the REC system, gives a lot of great music a way to stand out. Also Its all about the interface, which is totally workable and intuitve. I NEED that!
ive gotten some great music from you guys! and for mad cheap. keep it coming!
I have found some amazing music on amie.st. It’s nice to see a variety of music that has not been played out yet. I am a DJ for my campus radio station and have recieved great feedback from the songs that I’ve played from the site. Keep up the good work amie. st!
I was a little skeptic when I first came across amie.st. However, the music that I have found has been amazing and I love the hot reviews coming from my friends about all this new music I’ve been accruing. Also the pictures on amie.st show the artists in an aesthetically pleasing light, one which I feel is lacking in the superficial itunes setting. The whole business structure of the website is perfect, and I feel that it is a business that has awesome room for growth. I love it!
I love the new design! It is very user-friendly. Not to mention the music on the site is great! The fact that the site has its own player is also pretty awesome. When I logged onto the site a couple of days ago I was surprised by the diversity of the music. There was definitely something for everyone! Amie.st is such an innovative idea! I look forward to seeing the site continue to grow! Keep up the good work guys!
Ok that last post was supposed to be in my name…Let me try again…I love the new design! It is very user-friendly. Not to mention the music on the site is great! The fact that the site has its own player is also pretty awesome. When I logged onto the site a couple of days ago I was surprised by the diversity of the music. There was definitely something for everyone! Amie.st is such an innovative idea! I look forward to seeing the site continue to grow! Keep up the good work guys!
Amie.St is fantastic. It’s great to be able to hear and download new music for such low prices. It has a user-friendly design and is quite innovative in all respects. Good luck on your continued success!
check out koolim.com
Rob Safuto, per your points yesterday (sorry for the delay- long night) the DRM issue and the community-based pricing are two totally different features. Having no DRM doesn’t in any way decrease the payout to our artists. Further, our demographic of artists need exposure and Amie Street will adopt the necessary features to get their music to more fans. You only need to look as far as eMusic, the number two digital music retail site after iTunes, to see the success and positive market reaction of a no-DRM model. As for dropping the ‘open market’ stance, we believe that our music market works exactly because there are no supply-side constraints. If an independent artist has to give away a few copies of their song for free to incentivize new users to test their music, they are not suffering any inventory or marginal costs of distribution at all for that benefit. A spot on iTunes doesn’t guarantee an independent artist will be found; we believe that once an artist is discovered on our site at 0 cents and their music then climbs to the cap of 98 cents, they will have a much greater success rate, both in profit and exposure. Finally, we are a new site; the transaction costs associated with distributing royalty payments every week, and any time less than $10 was owed would make it really hard to continue to give back 70% to our artists. As soon as it is economically feasible, you can bet we will be paying out even more to our artists. We’re music lovers, not music tycoons.
How many $.88 songs does a band have to sell in order to pay the rent? I don’t think that variations on the mass marketing model are going to do very many musicians very much good.
I say, better to abandon the “pennies per song” model and get with the “fans sponsor artist” model. Don’t ask less for the songs in an effort to promote them- give them away free in order to promote the band!
Then ask your true fans to sponsor your work. It’s a beautiful thing.
Neat to see people playing with pricing models, but this seems almost backwards. The more popular it is, the more easy it is to get on one of p2p networks. Since the value of the online services really seems to be keyed to convenience, the more popular it is, the less valuable the service is.
Maybe they should flip the model over: have you pay for unpopular stuff and give credits when a song you bought becomes popular; Give free downloads of popular music for “current” customers. Downside is that you’d have to work out some way of sharing revenue with popular artists, who are now effectively acting as your loss leader.
Pete,
Yes, this is true, but just a clarification, you’re on the other side of the curve. When something is truly “popular”, meaning sales of thousands and thousands of tracks, the price should decline per your argument once it hits that inflection point when the marginal revenue of an additional sale hits 0. However, we’re dealing with the first part of that curve here. Like a tree in the woods, if no one hears the music, does it have any market value?
DRM has been a total failure and a step against the people on whom the whole music industry is actually based- the listeners, the music consumers.
Do you treat someone badly who comes to your store in order to buy something? The (major) labels and music managers are totally desperate because they are afraid to loose their jobs. Ok, I understand that. But, why do they have to lie then? The future belongs to the visionairies of our time, and I am sure this will not the people who try to rescue their state in sticking to old conventions and outdated restrictions.
As it is already mentioned in Wikipedia, the term “Digital Rights management” should rather be named “Digital Restriction Management”