Amazon Invests in Music Site AmieStreet

Authored by Jay Baage on August 6, 2007 - 5:25am.

New York. AmieStreet, a digital music site that prices songs of new artists according to their popularity, said on Monday that Amazon.com is leading a first round of investment in the start-up. The amount of Amazon’s investment and the terms are not disclosed. The round also included a few private investors.

AmieStreet allows musicians to post songs with a variable pricing model, which is different from the one-price model used by Apple Inc.'s popular iTunes Music Store. Artists upload their music (DRM free), which users can download at a starting price of free. As a song’s downloads increase, the price starts to rise, all the way up to $0.99. The artist keeps 70% of revenues after the first $5 in sales.

The company was started by three Brown University graduates last october and has now grown to 12 people that work out of their shared Long Island house. Some of the new funding would be used to expand their new office space and facilities in New York.
"The idea of having customers directly influence the price of songs is an interesting and novel approach to selling digital music," Jeff Blackburn, senior vice president for business development at Amazon, said in a statement.

Related Links:
http://amiestreet.com/
http://tinyurl.com/2eyzu5
http://tinyurl.com/26hyok