Amie Street

Taken from Wikipedia

Amie Street is an indie online music store and social network service created in 2006 by Brown University seniors Elliott Breece, Elias Roman, and Joshua Boltuch, in Providence, Rhode Island. They have since graduated and moved the company to Long Island City in Queens, New York.

History
Founded in early 2006, Amie Street opened to the public with a pre-alpha version on July 4, 2006 and was quickly scooped by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. However, because the site was so young there weren't many artists available and there was frequent downtime. Amie Street's catalog and stability have grown steadily since then, adding nine members to the team and creating partnerships with various record labels including Nettwerk Music Group and Daptone Records. A few weeks after the initial crush of traffic an alpha version was completed and a beta version was launched on October 4, 2006.


Investors
As reported by TechCrunch on August 5, 2007, Amie Street announced a site redesign and, led by Amazon.com, closed their "Series A" round of venture capital funding. They began negotiations for the round in January 2007. One notable angel investor is Robin Richards, former president of MP3.com.


Website features
Artists upload tracks onto the site, which allows users to purchase them at a price that varies according to demand. Website users earn credits by recommending ("REC"ing) songs to their friends. If the REC was for a good song and leads to users purchasing it, the price of the song will increase. The user will earn credit based on the increase in the price of the song after making the REC.


Demand-based pricing
Amie Street uses an algorithm to determine song prices based on demand. The price for a track starts at zero when a song is uploaded onto the site. It then rises according to the increased demand and purchase of the song. The maximum price any song will rise to is 98¢. A pricing calculator is available and it shows the simple model used to determine pricing. The price curve changes based on the overall volume of songs purchased on the site. As of August 5, 2007 15 buys yields a price of 1¢, 25 buys yields 15¢, 50 buys yields 50¢, and 84 buys yields 98¢.


Selling music
Artists upload their music directly to the site in mp3 format at whatever quality bitrate they choose. (Other formats are "on the way.") As users buy songs, the artist is credited. Artists keep 70% of the proceeds after US$5 in sales for each song. PayPal or checks are used to make payments to artists. There is some speculation that Amazon's new web service Amazon FPS would be a good match for the site.

RECs
Non-artist users can earn credit as well. They do this by RECing a song. When a user finds a song they believe will be a hit, they can REC it. If the song price increases from the moment they REC it, they will receive compensation based on the price increase. For example, if one RECs a song currently at 5¢ and it rises to 95¢, the user will cash out half the spread: 45¢ , just for RECing the song. If a user RECs a song when it is free, they are compensated with the full spread. RECing also differentiates more popular music from less, as songs that are believed to be good will be RECed more often. Users get approximately 1 REC for every US$1 they use on the site.


Social networking
Users can make connections with other users through the "friend" feature. "Friends" on Amie Street are intended to be based around musical interests. RECs are sent out to friends to make it easier to find new music in a music "news feed". Users can message each other and post comments on freely customizable (including Meebo integration) user profiles. There is also a "fan" feature so users can easily connect with bands on the site. All of this information is neatly organized on each user's dashboard and available as separate RSS web feeds.


[edit] Benefit media
On November 6, 2006, Amie Street introduced four benefit media tracks to the site. These songs are priced at 50¢ and all proceeds from sales go to the charity Free The Children. The tracks are Rushian and Waitress from the album Us Against the Crown by State Radio and Awakening and From Now On by Sonny Fortune.

On March 28, 2007, Amie Street expanded their benefit media program with six more tracks to boost donations for Boomer Esiason's Foundation and the Blubrry Jam campaign to fight cystic fibrosis. Also priced at 50¢, Brother Love and HER and Kings County each contributed three tracks to the cause.

lonelygirl15 partnership
On May 15, 2007, lonelygirl15 teamed up with Amie Street to sell music featured in episodes of the show.