Amie Street Loves Prostitutes
Duncan Riley
30 comments »
When you think of prostitutes, you usually think of vice and the dark side of the Valley, and not something most startups would want to be associated it. Independent online music service Amie Street not only loves them, they’re probably praying for more.
In March New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s predilection for high class call girls was splashed across the media worldwide and his favorite hooker of choice was Ashley Alexandra Dupre. Between tricks Dupre dreamed of a singing career, and her outlet of choice was Amie Street. Dupre’s two singles not only broke Amie Street records for sales volume, she also delivered a massive bounce in traffic for Amie Street. By the end of the month Amie Street’s traffic had more than tripled according to both Quantcast and Compete (charts available on Amie Street’s Crunchbase page here).
There’s no later traffic data to see how much of Amie Street’s new traffic stuck around, the bump certainly didn’t hurt Amie Street’s profile.
See Michael’s January 2007 review of Amie Street here.
I never thought I’d read a story about praying for more prostitutes on TechCrunch.
hmmm…startups use even these kind of wicked tricks to build traffic. don’t know what to say.
any news of a record deal?
Real name is Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro.
It’s easy to create a hit.
1.Make an average music
2. Create a controversy
Do they accept callboys?
What’s with the ridiculous headline? I know TechCrunch is sensationalist, but this is taking it to new lows.
Listen to her music: http://collect.myspace.com/mus.....2lKbMWICDt
Okay, she has a decent music. Hhhhm, she has the potential to become popular like the Paris Hilton way.
Amie is milking the Dupree cow for all she’s got, for her 15mins of fame - ever the opportunists
James
you’re completely right. It was originally Amie Street loves hookers but Michael thought prostitutes worked better
Post about prostitutes on TechCrunch..had never imagined.
Duncan,
Really, Really old news…move on….
More like “Amie Street Loves EXPENSIVE Prostitutes”
Mark you brain dead moron: the hooker gave them a traffic spike, or do you seriously think that they would not have welcomed the boost? Would you like to see copies of the emails from Amie Street from the time this originally broke which prove how excited they were by the association (they exist BTW).
Steve, the figures relate to the end of the month which have only just become available: how new figures are old news is news to me, I was also asked to write the post by MA for the record.
Some of these comments just prove that some people are seriously sad, humorless f……
Duncan, it is a shame some people couldn’t read between the lines of your post and see where you were getting at …it really wasn’t that hard.
But to be honest, calling a reader a ‘brain dead moron’ and a ’sad, humorless f…’ is exactly the reason that blogging will always remain second to mainstream news companies. Be a little more professional mate…
On topic, Amie St is definitely the best model to come out of Web 2.0…
It is one of the only reasons I have hope for Web 2.0 . YouTube, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc are the reasons I don’t.
No foreseeable revenue models = no success. Period.
Thoughts?
It’s going to be really interesting to see how much of that traffic Amie Street can keep for itself.
I’m actually a student at MIT currently and we are conducting a digital music survey to answer these sorts of questions. If you have 15 minutes to take the survey and want to make $5 worth of Amie Street credit please see the link below.
Thanks for your help!
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s......GHNg_3d_3d
Brad: Just did it for you mate.
Cool that you are giving an incentive for people to do this and what a good choice for an incentive. Although I would have done it for you regardless.
This is very insensitive..especially when that poor little girl is facing so much of media scrutiny..as if that wasn’t enuf
When I read the headline in my RSS-reader, I knew this piece had to be from Duncan… (well, to be honest, I first had to check if I hadn’t subscribed to a feed from Valleywag or Fox News by accident…)
The moralistic, puritanical undertone when gleefully reporting about any kind of connection between some company and sex (omg! porn! hookers! titties!) is childish and annoying. It has f*** all to do with ‘humor’, unless your still in high school.
Good for Ashley, she has her own “groupies” now.
But how long is it gonna last? She should be looking at launching an album asap.
@Alex, good on you. I think the point(s) you raise are a symptom of many companies focusing on eyeballs rather than business models. It isn’t an either/or proposition, but if you build your company with only one of them in mind, you risk alienation during your transition from eyeballs to business model. I believe they need simultaneous attention.
C’mon…. I mean really, who doesn’t love prostitutes?
But seriously… kudos to Amie St. for being in the right place at the right time.
“Some of these comments just prove that some people are seriously sad, humorless f……”
Nice one Dunkers just insult your readers.
Nice one Rick.
Dunkers I hope you dont get caught smoking behind those bike sheds again hehe
get it right, amie street is just a vendor; it will sell whatever the public buys
reality - public loves celebrities/prostitutes
(which are really the same thing in many respects)
I agree with my namesake @21. Luckily for AmieStreet, Miss Alexandra had not shopped her music to itunes or amazon.
@7…Milking it? They sat back and watched their traffic explode! As I told one of the founders, they pulled off one of the biggest PR stunts that I could remember…and it wasn’t even a stunt!
Funny to see this post so long after the whole scandal has died down –
Congrats to Amie Street for signing an exclusive with Ashley, I know she completely abandoned her myspace page after it getting leaked to the press, and all of her lucrative endorsement deals seem to have fallen to the waistside, so I bet she’s glad she got hers while she could from Amie Street.
Grooveshark is the perfect platform for fan promotion, as it allows fans to find new music, and share it with those around them, all while ensuring everybody gets paid.
I think this pokes a hole in the Amie St. model. People are more interested in buying a single from an unsigned prostitute (who is in the public eye) than they are buying real music. Why? Marketing. Major labels sell (or sold) records b/c of marketing. W/o that marketing juggernaut behind them, it is hard for bands to even make people aware that music is out there.
We have been around the horn on this a few times, Amie St is the most promising idea out there for up and coming music monetization models. I am looking for a Zivity.com model, as well, for music.
Amie St. doesn’t make me want to die, that is a start.
Well, as the linked article says it’s not the “record for sales volume” it the record of how fast the first 50 or so sales for one song were made. As I see on Amie Street after the song reaches the maximum price it usually would not sell in the same volumes any longer.
So, what the linked article states is “50 sales really fast” and no info on any more sales. There can be 0 sales after the song hits it’s 98 cents. This definitely does not mean *sales volume*.
For those interested, I interviewed the Amie Street guys shortly after the Ashley bump. You can check it out here:
My Interview with Josh and Zane from AmieStreet: http://mymediamusings.wordpres.....p;post=368
While I usually criticize Duncan, he did a great job on this post. That being said Duncan, one of the problems with print/blog article is that it’s often difficult to convey tone and this makes it challenging to be sarcastic or funny.