Amie Street is an intriguing alternative to eMusic

I’ve been an eMusic subscriber since 2001, and it’s been my favorite place to get digital music ever since. What’s not to like? They’ve had DRM-free downloads from the beginning, I can download songs for as little as 25 cents, and they’ve got a huge library of independent music (4 million songs).

Still, I’ve always wished that eMusic could be a bit more like Netflix. It would be nice to easily “friend” my real-life pals, and see what they’re downloading. Amie Street, which unveiled a brand new re-design this week, might be just what I’ve been looking for. As the name implies, Amie Street manages to add some Netflix-like social features, while providing DRM-free independent music at very competitive prices. But Amie Street also includes a couple of innovations eMusic can’t  match.

Users set the price

First, Amie Street’s pricing is weird. I’ll let them explain it:

[A]ll songs on Amie Street are priced from free to 98 cents. Instead of the arbitrary $0.99 per song, on Amie Street the community determines the price of music. Every song starts free, or very cheap, and increases in price, up to 98 cents, as more and more people purchase it. This variable pricing system ensures that the public gets music at a fair, community-driven price point, and makes it easy for you to find the type of music you want. We then encourage you to talk about the music you like by putting money in your account for more downloads when you recommend songs that continue to rise in price.

The upshot of their variable pricing is that it’s pretty easy to get new releases for between $2.50 and $5.00 a record, because the market function hasn’t yet pushed the price up. Older or more obscure releases are also cheap, because many fewer people are buying them. For example, the latest New Pornographers record is $9.98. But you can get their debut album for $6.22.

In my tests this week, I was getting much better prices on less popular stuff, including Jay Reatard’s Matador Singles ‘08 for 55 cents per song and the Red House Painters Retrospective for 21 cents per track (less than I would have paid on eMusic). I bought the brand new Phil Elverum  / Julie Doiron record, Lost Wisdom, for $2.50.

It’s true that many of the most popular downloads are actually on par with prices charged by iTunes or Amazon. And the selection of barely 1 million tracks is only a quarter of eMusic’s considerable library. Still, I only have 90 downloads a month on eMusic, and sometimes I want more. Amie Street is a good second option when I’m out of downloads or I feel like bargain hunting.

You can take it with you

Amie Street’s second distinctive feature is their Web music player. Like eMusic, once you’ve purchased a track, it will show up in your library where it can be downloaded again free of charge. But unlike eMusic, Amie Street organizes your library of songs into an iTunes-like Web player where you can play your songs—and your friends’ songs—over the Internet. From wherever you happen to be.

This has been great for me. I can listen to all my downloads at work. If I want, I can purchase tracks at lunch, listen to them immediately, and then download the actual mp3 files when I get home.

The player itself isn’t all that sophisticated. It has a random button, and you can sort and search you tunes.  You can also build playlists listen to playlists your friends put together. But I’ve not seen another music service that’s even bothered with something this obvious and cool.

Other features

A few other things I dig about Amie Street:

• No separate program is required to download files. All files are ZIP archives that come with the MP3s and album art.
• There’s a focus on recommending individual tracks. When deciding whether to download something,  you can see which particular songs have been recommended by the community.
• Like eMusic, Amie Street recommends music for you, but Amie Street allows you to refine those results by “fanning” artists and labels (i.e., selecting them as your favorites).
• Your history shows what you’ve downloaded as well as the price you paid for each recording. Your history also shows the songs you’ve listened to recently.
• AmieStreet is pay as you go. No pressure to use up your downloads before losing them. And AmieStreet takes PayPal, which is nice.

To summarize, I made a quick comparison chart:

DRM	None	None
Bit Rate	Variable	Variable
Available tracks	4 million	1 million
Purchase model	Subscription	Pay as you go
Payment Method	Credit Card	Credit Card or PayPal
Free music samplers?	Yes	Yes
Downloader required?	Yes	No
Social Features	Difficult to find your friends, can’t share download history	Easy to share and recommend artists. Can play your friends’ tracks through Web player.
Online Web Player	No	Yes
Cost	As low as 25 cents per song with subscription additional  tracks cost between 40 & 60 cents.	Tracks can range from free to 99 cents, depending on popularity. Average price per track around30 to 50 cents.
Re-download tracks free of charge	Yes	Yes
Content from All Music Guide?	Yes	Yes
Additional editorial content and writers?	Yes	No

Overall, I still prefer eMusic for their broad selection and their commitment to original writing and editorial content. But I’ll definitely be using Amie Street to supplement my digital music buying habit.