One of my very first posts on this blog was an interview I did with the founders of Amie Street, an independent music distributor with a pricing model based on a track’s popularity.
According to ArsTech the guys have added indie label The Orchard and over 1 million new tunes. Says The Orchard:
“The partnership is a significant validation of the consumer-empowering business model AmieStreet.com is pioneering,” The Orchard says in its press release. “On AmieStreet.com, songs are priced based on their demand, and customers receive money for more downloads when they recommend their favorite songs. By allowing consumers to drive the price of music, a song’s price becomes a measure of its popularity, enabling people to discover new music with more ease and convenience.”
Congrats guys! Keep up the indie spirit.
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I honestly didn’t see how the current Spitzer brewhaha would ever provide grist for my particular mill, but it is yet another sign that this is truly the digital age that I have, in fact, found crossover.
Many outlets are reporting on the now publicly known identity of Spitzer’s hooker, one Ashley Alexandra Dupree and her dreams of music stardom.
Ashley’s single is on AimeStreet, a music distribution site I have discussed here on this blog. Their pricing is based on a tracks popularity, so, according to Silicon Valley Insider, ”Ashley uploaded her first song onto Amie Street on Nov. 8, 2007. Up until yesterday afternoon, you could snag it for 7 cents. Today a download of “What We Want” will cost you 98 cents.”
They’ve got some more interesting stats as well that show seem to indicate she is outselling all the “name” artists on the site by a wide margin. She has also had her head together enough to upload a second single to the site today and it, to, is already up to the maximum price of 98 cents.
This is the power of the internet and self-distribution. A traditional label would never have been able to cash in on this sort of moment but and individual connected to the internet can literally become a platinum-selling artists in the same week she brings down a governor.
Awesome.
ArsTechnica has a post about the growing number of artists licensing their music to be sold by indie website Amie Street.
“Interpol, Cat Power, The New Pornographers, Devendra Banhart, Belle and Sebastian, and Architecture In Helsinki are just a few of the artists releasing music through Amie Street today. And like everything else released through Amie Street, everything will start out as a free download. But don’t think it’ll stay free for long—the more people that download the songs, the higher the price gets. The popularity-driven pricing structure tops out at 98¢ per song, along the same lines as a song you would buy from iTunes or Amazon MP3.”
I love the idea of a popularity-driven pricing structure. It builds excitement in the process of buying. If you take a risk and get in early, you pay less. If you wait until everyone says buy it, you pay more.
This is another example of the sort of thinking that initially seems like it could never produce revenue but calls on new ways of understanding the economy and customers.
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June 28, 2008 11:01 pm | 
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