If you, like me, enjoy music but find the prices on iTunes (especially the British iTunes) extortionate, being expected to pay £0.79 per track, Amie Street may be the site for you. Whilst it primarily appears to be used by unsigned I was surprised to spot half a dozen bands whom I already have in my music collection (such as Wheatus and Vampire Weekend).
Amie Street is a site which recommends music to its users, then it allows you to buy those songs (or indeed, if the artist allows it, download them free of charge) and you can then recommend the song to others. If you recommend the song and the pr
ice increases as a result, you will get a share of that difference back. Prices change for the more people who download the song with a maximum of 98cents per song (still cheaper than iTunes!).
Some top names in Amie Street are Gary Numan, Badly Drawn Boy, Tay
Zonday (Chocolate Rain Guy), Wheatus and Vampire Weekend.
Amie Street is truly a social music shop and I love the way how pricing changes depending on the popularity of songs and how the users themselves can influence this by recommending songs, which involves the writing of a short review and having to compare the song to other artists (not each when you hear how unique some of these songs are!).
I also think the way it suggests music is pretty clever because it requires other users to tag songs as being similar to certain artists as you can use this to discover other tagged songs.
Best of all, the songs you download aren’t full of DRM and are nice, clean MP3s (the bitrate seems to be different for different songs).
You can put as little as $3 in your account in one top-up which will also get you 2 credits to recommend songs. You cannot recommend all songs or else you would, in order to maximise earnings. You can make $2.50 for referring a friend.
I would love to see how Amie Street, a fairly independent site, does compared to the likes of 7digital.
Needless to say, not all songs are available outside the US but I have not found one yet which has a US-only restriction on it.
If you join, please add me as your friend. My username is computerjoe.
Tags: music, amie street, itunes, mp3
You are absolutely right. I discovered aimestreet through Tay Zonday’s offering of two of his songs, then the Chocolate Rain: Benefit Power remix album. A lot of his fans like myself joined up. I like how your reviews can not only help someone but you get “rec” credit. I had never downloaded music before. It’s great!