Idolator

Your Idolators are far too consumed with David Lee Roth jokes and musically themed cruise ships to keep up with the latest MP3 emporiums So we asked intern Cortney Harding to look into up-and-coming website AmieStreet.com. Her report follows:

Every day, a new music-delivery system enters the world—but few of them have a pricing model quite like Amie Street, which was inspired in part by the stock market: Songs are initially posted for free, and only go up in price when they're downloaded multiple times. Founded by three college seniors in Providence, Rhode Island, Amie Street provides artists a fairly generous 70% cut of every song sale, although there's no explanation as to how they cut checks for seventy percent of a penny (Ed. Note: We do this at Idolator all the time; all you need is a tiny, tiny quill).

As with any other music sales site, there are a multitude of catches: The vast majority of artists on the site are garage bands you've probably never heard of, but if you're willing to wade through a lot of dreck, there are some deals to be found: Blog-buzzards Thunderbirds Are Now! have a live record up for a measly $.31, and tracks by Brooklyn alt-klezmerists One Ring Zero can be found for a quarter.

Still, with so many blogs posting tracks for free nowadays, some Amie Street visitors will no doubt bristle at the idea of paying for indie-rock, even if it's mere pocket change. And the site's social networking component also seems underdeveloped: There are no profile pages, and no discussion boards where users can chat and critique the content. Amie Street seems to be targeting the very niche market of music fans who feel guilty about downloading songs for free, and want to start paying up—as long as it's not going to cost them too much.

Amie Street