elvinfish.com

Fans of iTunes should check out AmieStreet.com, an up and coming music website focused on independent music. Amie street can be best described as a hybrid of a social network and an online music vendor. In short, it is a healthy mixture between Myspace and Apple’s iTunes.

Registered users of amiestreet.com can participate in a healthy mix of exploring new artists, recommending their favourite bands and buying music tracks online. On the other end, bands can register, promote and sell their music and expect to pocket up to 70% of the revenue generated.

Amie Street’s promise is that no track will exceed $0.98 USD, and that is pretty competitive pricing in my opinion. The current leader in online music sales, iTunes, charges $0.99 a track the last time I checked. So, you could be saving a whole penny! What makes Amie Street’s pricing model so unique is that prices for tracks are determined by the fans. In addition, the pricing model allows incentives for both the customer as well as the band. As a user you can actually get paid for participating on the website.

The dynamic pricing model is driven by what Amie Street dubs, “The Rec System.” The Rec System, is summarized on the company’s website as responsible for the following function:

REC system: The REC system drives the site’s music discovery process. The price of a song is determined by how many times it is purchased, and Amie Street pays customers for discovering and recommending great music. For example, if a user “RECs” a song when it costs 0 cents, and the song grows to 98 cents, the user receives 98 cents for RECing that song. Members are able to see who REC’d a song and can find other users who have similar music taste so they can find more music they will like, allowing niche communities to flourish on Amie Street, and ultimately showcasing the music that is relevant and compelling on a global scale.

I think this is a neat system and the website has a lot of potential to develop into something big. However, so far Amie Street hasn’t been a viral success. I have been keeping an eye on the website’s traffic for the last four months and it seems as if  growth has been slow, according to stats on alexa.com. There might be more bad news for the company as Myspace gets ready to sell music online. With a database of over a million artists and a well established user base, Myspace could not only knock out websites such as AmieStreet.com but, could be a strong competitor of Apple’s iTunes.

We will just have to see. In the meantime, go check out Amie Street; It is a treat. Sometimes I just like to park on the, “about me page,” and sample some free tunes.

Between two go daddy accounts, I have managed to amass twenty six domains. Out of these, I have only managed to develop and monetize four domains (not including this one). Most of the domains are really crappy, and I don’t plan on renewing them; however, a couple of them have potential.

So I’m going to admit that I’m addicted to registering domains, although compared to other people my addiction isn’t too bad. There are many out there that have more than XXXX domains registered. And, I will say that I am constantly in awe when I hear people talk about the number of domains they own; however, I wouldn’t want to get stuck with their renewal bills.

Last night, after work I purchased two domains, socialnetworksafety.com and socialnetworksafety.org. These purchases were inspired by the recent lawsuit filed my Myspace.com against Sandford Wallace for alleged spamming and phishing.

As social networking sites grow, the number of “enthusiasts,” out to exploit the average user is likely to grow proportionately. And, maybe there is room for one more advisory group, to protect uninformed users.

I’ll keep you posted if anything develops from the recent purchases.