Amie Street, as reported on techcrunch, seems to be taking the high road in mp3 sales. This is an amazing system designed to help independent bands sell their mp3’s. Here’s how it works:
-Upload your songs
-Encourage people to download them for free
-As your tracks (hopefully) gain in popularity your prices are driven higher (with a 99cent cap).
-You get featured with other popular indie bands as your popularity grows even more.
-You keep 70% of revenues after the first $5, which is more than even the most popular bands get via record sales OR iTunes (though I think as an indie band, my band makes more like 60% from iTunes).
The greatest part about all this is that these are DRM-free mp3’s, which means you can upload to and play them on anything (unlike those pesky iTunes mp3’s, which only work on your iPod and start at 99cents). I’m a firm believer in this, and so are most indie bands (we want that whole “viral” thing to work for our music…it’s not worth 99cents to deny someone that).
This isn’t to say that I don’t love my iPod nano. My band has it’s songs on iTunes; it’s where the business is. Do we get many purchases that way? No. This system definetly has potential. Will I put Monsters are not Myths‘ tracks on Amie Street? Not yet.
I think this is a great system, but for a very small and independent band like mine, I’m worried that our tracks never reach a popularity/price where we can make a profit. And with that alternative, we’ll get 0 downloads on iTunes. The alternative is selling mp3s on MySpace, which kind of makes me feel dirty inside (considering that MySpace is notoriously unstable and unsafe).
I’m not happy with our current situation, but I’m not convinced Amie Street is right for me (though I think it’ll be great for a bunch of indie musicians). I will be keeping a close eye on Amie Street and MySpace and returning to this debate in time.
-Evan
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