Amie Street is one of my favorite startups right now, partially because they are the embodiment of (what I consider to be) the perfect music model: DRM-free MP3s sold at pure market driven prices.
The company’s business model is dead simple – Artists can upload their music for download on the site. Users download songs, with the starting price at free. When downloads pick up for popular songs, the price starts to rise, all the way up to $0.99. If a song gets to $0.30 or so, you know its popular. The artist keeps 70% of revenues after the first $5 in sales.
We’ve followed the company through its beta and launch periods. Until now, though, the company wasn’t doing much with all the pricing/popularity data they were gathering. Yesterday, however, they started allowing people to vote on songs directly (like Digg and the recently launched iJigg), and launched new areas of the site to show popular songs.
Amie Street has also released tools to help artists promote their songs, including an embeddable player for any song (see this MySpace page for an example) and a tool to allow artists to create Amie Street song stores on their own websites.
The company says they are currently in the process of raising a Series A round of capital. In this funding environment, I don’t think it will be very hard for them to close that round. All three of the founders, Elliott Breece, Elias Roman and Joshua Boltuch (pictured here) are still, I believe, in college.
AMIE ST is certainly one of my favorites too.. As it should be, a market driven system is always the way to go in many cases..
Wow, that sounds like a very interesting business model.
But one has to wonder if someone might abuse the system by simply being one of the first to get the songs that have the potential to be successful, and then freely distribute those (via P2P) when they become more expensive.
I guess time will tell.
go bruno!
I do like some things about amie.st but I’m still not sure how they really put anything in place to first check that the submission someone uploads is legal and valid (it seems like I can just register an account and upload some brittany spears or something)… and second prevent this new voting system from being abused and gamed in the future….
I think Amie St. has very nice features to help a fan like myself to find and buy excellent indie music. I especially like their interactive music player.
I’m not a fan of their ‘market’ based model. In every market a product has some initial value. Rewarding people who seek out good music by making it free is a good idea. But that doesn’t help artists pay the bills. Significant investment goes into quality independent music. So why should an artist be penalized financially because their track is new?
Their sample tracks also don’t stream the full song. I say they should allow full streaming of all tracks for free and start the payment for tracks at something like $.50. Then I think the business model will have a chance.
Wow.
What a great idea! This proved that common sense is sometimes uncommon. Sometime the simplest ideas are the most successful. Web 2.0 companies have benefits for both consumer and owners.
DBAs Rock!
Rob, I agree with your point to some extent but if you notice new and unknown artist’s cd’s usually start out a lot cheaper in retail stores (bestbuy, etc..) and even online stores like itunes, to gain traction and eventually end up going up in price… this is a nice incentive for discovery that the record industry actually embraces…. it isnt free like amie but the concept is similar
It make sense; The perfect flexible business model. with no DRM -
If I were a record label, I would buy it! – or – make it give me a Exclusive contract then throw my artist on there! – also do an american idol type thing, where the top artist on AMIE st, would be offered a contract!
- Also I can get artist to step up there work with statements like;
“Um, your being out performed by, that white kid!”
Here’s a great review of Amie Street if you want to know more:
http://www.thep...on-amie-street/
It’s a great website.
I interviewed Joshua (click my name) back in Nov. He talks about gaming the system, funding, etc. We did the interview at a coffee shop in NYC so there is a little background noise but that makes it real
He also discusses his biggest mistake with AS since it launched. The interview is about 20 minutes.
Joshua strikes me as a guy who really has a good vision for the road to success for AS.
BTW, all 3 are out of college as of last year.
FYI, Grooveshark.com has a ‘legal napster’ way of dealing with DRM…
From an artist perspective, if they can gain critical mass and own a few niche fan bases; idm, hyphy, noise etc. they’ll be in good shape…..but given their target demo’s concern with aesthetics….if they go the “anything goes” road of cdbaby the cool kids will stay away……and it’s the cool kids you need early in a bands career before any label truly pays attention…….sad but true.
If I were them I’d start reaching out to booking agents as they are always ahead of the curve. Offer a few of the pitchfork-esque agencies promotional incentives to sign up their rosters; kork, highroad, billions etc.
If you take a look at the abundance of great free music available via IODA’s promotrack’s program, it’s clear even established bands with a solid following don’t mind free tracks circulating.
SXSW party?
Five reasons Amie St. is dead in the water:
The site has a terrible name.
They didn’t buy the domain that goes with their terrible name/logo – amiest.com.
You can’t do squat until you sign up at the site, and there’s nothing to entice you to sign up.
The site’s business model punishes people who create niche music & rewards people that make mainstream pap.
It’s a pyramid scheme built on the assumption that people won’t redistribute the songs to file-sharing services.
The future of music will be the record industry licensing their own DRM standard for selling mainstream pap, and free mp3s for indie music.
A lot of people seem to love the Amie St. concept, but now that they’ve been around for a bit, let’s stop talking about the model and ask:
- How many songs have they sold?
- Have they turned a profit?
- What’s the most money an artist has made with them?
These are a lot more important than whether, in theory, their market-driven model and lack of DRM makes for a winner. By now there should be some sort of validation.
After I read this blog post, I created an account myself. The website seems to not be fully functional. For example:
I went to
Charts->Genres->Electronic->Latest
And then at the bottom of the page, there is an indication that there are 6 pages of latest music, but when you click on Page 2 or any other page, it is just blank. Went to other Genres and the same problem is there.
A lot of people love the model, love the idea. I’m one of them. However music does not sell because of business models, it sells because of music.
If this is ever to be successful, they need to hit the road, hit the clubs, and make some deals with indie labels or venues, or bands, in order to get some good music up there.
They compete against my company, so, I’m not giving them high marks.
Wow!instant music discovery service with direct kick back to the artists: Could be really viral. I’m there.
I thought at first from all the hype that this would be an awesome way to promote my band’s music.
So I foolishly uploaded 8 tracks from an old CD. Now I realize what a mistake I made! You can’t edit the tracks, once they’re uploaded it’s done. And somehow the conversion was screwed up because now the tracks are played at 10x the normal speed on the site…and I can’t take them down because they’re permanent!
SNAFU
Hi Adam,
I’m sorry about the problems you had uploading. From time to time there are problems in converting the bit rates and we always are quick to help our artists re-upload the tracks. If you would like to email feedback@amiestreet.com with your artist name and the tracks that uploaded incorrectly I’d be happy to take them down for you. I hope you consider uploading them again.
Best,
Josh
These guys are the real deal – a bunch of very smart and very focused dudes who know how to execute. This company is a winner!
I love to see stuff like this…young and innovative.
My mp3 player at this point has 166 songs on it. 137 songs are from Amie Street. I havent listened to the radio in since august. I havent been watching MTV. Ive been sitting here and listening to music uploade don Amie Street. One thing the free download allows me to do is listen to music i wouldnt otherwise listen give a listen. Not only has my music library expanded so has the horizon of what I listen to. I would never have listed to half of these artist if it wasnt for the music rec system unless they were artist I know and see arund Rhode Island. The Amie Street guys do this for the love of music. Ive seen their 19 hour days putting their all into it and falling asleep at the keyboard. Excpet for a few other artist that are already big, Amie Street is the only place that I buy music. Its just that dam cool.
I think they are working on getting indie artists up there by actually working with artists, just like any other music distribution model would. As a result they’ve been able to get some really good tracks.
Using “pure market driven prices” for a digital good is the least economically grounded concept of all time, ever.
Dead in the water.
Michael. You do realize that this is not really market pricing don’t you? It is an algorithm, perhaps simpler than you might want to know, which simply raises the price as the number/rate of purchases increases. There is no real supply curve for a digital good like downloadable music.
It is, of course, worthwhile to see music prices that are flexible rather than a one price fits all model. And the DRM free aspect is great. But lets be honest about the pricing model. This is modeled on a belief about the demand curve.
I like the Amie Street model but I immediately have two questions: what is the incentive for larger music groups to be a part of this exchange and why is it capped at $0.99? I believe in supply and demand and am all about letting markets decide what is best so how does Amie Street address the question of songs being worth more than $0.99? Overall great model though.
When does Amie Street do the same with manuscripts, videos, … ?
I dont see why an artist would want to join Amie Street, with other established services in place, the design looks budget at best. I think its a step in the right direction, creative, but i see absolutely no incentive for an artist to upload their music.
http://www.mysp...com/walkingcity