Amie Street: not the typical digital store
While most people think of iTunes (and now Amazon) when thinking of a digital music store, the number of digital stores has grown tremendously over the past five years. There is a digital store that you may have not heard of, called Amie Street, and it takes a unique approach towards selling music… an approach that honors Music 2.0 principles and combines social networking aspects.
At first glance, Amie Street looks like a normal digital store; sign up for an account and you’ll find out that the members affect the price of the songs. When a song or album is added to Amie Street, the price is set at free. This gives the album an initial boost of downloads and helps the artist climb into the charts (since so many of us are attracted to free music). As people begin to download songs, the price per song slowly increases, capping at .98cents per song. Amie Street sets the value of the songs according to demand of the song.
As you purchase music you earn REC points, or recommendation points. You can’t simply jump into the site and begin recommending songs you haven’t purchased, either. You need to earn points so you can recommend songs to your friends. When you recommend, you can write a short review of the song and add tags of artists that the song reminds you of. This helps other members find the music.
Why would I want to recommend music? Besides the thrill of being active in the Amie Street community, your recommendation actually grows in dollar value. If you’re one of the first people to recommend a song, the value of your recommendation increases as others download the song and or recommend it. You can cash in on your recommendation and make money (not just store credits). The value of your RECs is shown as your STREET CRED, or street credits. 38 STREET CREDs shows that the value of your recommendations is .38 cents.
Amie Street ties in social networking into the store. You can friend people, whom you’ll send and receive recommendations. If you love an artist you can become their fan. Your library reveals all of the music you have downloaded, which can be downloaded again in the future at no extra cost. Amie Street eventually learns what style of music you enjoy, and based on tags and buying habits, the site will suggest music.
We decided to test Amie Street out, so we created a ChasingLions account, and uploaded The Soft Drugs‘ Get Back album. If you join Amie Street, befriend us and recommend songs that you think we should hear.