Amazon backs Amie Street, music site
Amazon.com, continuing its spurt of initiatives to keep up with new technology, has invested an undisclosed amount to music site AmieStreet.com.
This is the first round of financing for New York City’s AmieStreet.com, a year-old online digital music store. The company is different for its radical approach to pricing. All songs are free to begin with. But as more members of the site download a song, indicating popularity, the price of the song goes up, capping at 98 cents.
The site rewards members who recommend songs to their friends on the site, giving them credit for the purchase of additional music on AmieStreet.com. The more popular a song becomes after a member has recommended it, the more credit they receive to spend on music. This drives users to keep and discovering music.
Anyone can upload their music to AmieStreet.com, and all songs are downloadable in DRM-free mp3 format.
This is just the latest move that will help Amazon get kudos among the developer community. It has offered services that helps start-ups take care of their infrastructure needs cheaply, and recently launched its own payment service.
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Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
