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Music Lives at Amie Street

As the internet keeps being a growing marketplace for just about anything, the music industry has also taken a hold of the abundant market opportunities on the internet. Music, however, has not been a stranger to the internet. Napster was actually the first music file sharing network on the net, but was later forced to shut down because of the complaints of artists and record companies who thought they were loosing profits from everyone sharing music files on Napster. Once Napster got started, however, the gene was out of the bottle and both artists and record companies saw the potential for profit on the internet market. Many online music companies have emerged ever since Napster was shut down. One of these happens to be Amie Street, which advertises itself as a website that allows artists to upload their music for publication.

Anyone can sign up to use Amie Street’s services and you do not necessarily have to be an artist to use Amie Street. All you need to do is to type in your email address, a username, and a password that has to be more than four characters long. You also have the option to subscribe to Amie Street’s online newsletter, but if you do not like to have all kinds of junk email, the subscription is not necessary and you can uncheck the box that asks if you want to subscribe to their newsletter. The process takes a few seconds and then you are ready to browse over the collection of music that is available on the Amie Street website. Amie Street membership is free.

Once you have signed into Amie Street and are ready to look up music, you can select from several different genres. The genres that Amie Street offers are pop, rock, folk/country, electronic, hiphop/rap, soul, classical, and more. You can go on the genre pulldown menu and choose the genre of your particular taste. If you do not see the genre of your taste in the menu, you can click on more genres. When you click on the more genres option, you will find a huge variety of different genres ranging from music that comes from all over the world. You can even select from such genres such as polkas and other rare genres aimed at select tastes.

What makes Amie Street stand out from other music sites in the industry is that many of the songs and albums on the site can be downloaded for dirt cheep. You also have the option of listening to the music before you buy it. The only thing about Amie Street is that you have to pay a minimum of three dollars when you buy a music file or album from the site. You will get this notice as soon as you pay for a song or album that is under three dollars. You will also find a list of options from which you can choose from each option will cost more. Prices can range from three dollars all the way to above $90. Click on the option that you want and then you can proceed on to checkout. At the checkout, you have three different payment options. You can pay either with Amazon Payments, your Paypal account, or your own credit or debit card. If you choose to pay by credit or debit card, Amie Street takes MasterCard, American Express, Visa, and Discover cards.

Amie Street is a privately owned company that is based in Long Island City, New York, and was founded in 2006. The company currently employs twelve people and the company’s management team consists of the three cofounders, who are Elliot Breece, Elias Roman, and Joshua Boltuch.

Amie Street’s sole known investor is Amazon.com, which invested an undisclosed amount of money in series A funding in August of 2007.

Amazon.com is the pioneer in e-commerce and originally started by selling books online, now Amazon.com sells anything from books to records and other things as well and has become a multimillion dollar business. Amazon.com also invests in companies that could be of interest to Amazon.com

Because the online music and entertainment industry is such a fast growing marketplace, that it comes to no surprise that Amie Street does have a few competitors. One of the company’s most noteworthy competitors is GarageBand.com.
Founded in 1999, GarageBand.com is a subsidiary of iLike.com and offers a service that is similar to the service provided by Amie Street. GarageBand.com is managed by only one person and has seven people on its board of directors. The company is based in Seattle, Washington and its investors include Khosla Ventures and NEA.

For more information about Amie Street, click here.

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