Hey all,

It’s been awhile since I’ve written.  I’ve been busy preparing for our new arrival (little over 50 days to go) so I haven’t had much time to work on new scripts.  What I have had time to do, though, is find cool new sites/programs online.  So I’ve decided to turn my “Freeware Reviews” category into a general “Reviews” category.  I’ll try to post a weekly review of a website, program, or FireFox extension that I like.

Let’s kick the weekly review experiment off with a few tunes.  Like a lot of people, I’ve come to hate the recording industry.  They sue the defenseless, force them to settle (since it’s cheaper than defending your innocence in a courtroom), and then institute measure that serve to annoy fans and not stop pirates (e.g. DRM, Sony rootkits on CDs, etc).  I’ve long thought of looking into the independent music scene, but never found a site that gave me a good way of filtering the wheat from the chaff.

Then I stumbled upon Amie Street.  The concept is pretty simple.  Artists upload their music as MP3s (no DRM in sight).  The music starts off as free.  As people “buy” the free songs, the price increases.  The more people who buy the songs, the higher the price goes (to a maximum of 98 cents).  This encourages users to seek out new music inexpensively while allowing for the good music to earn the artists more money.

Of course, there is more to it than just an adjusting price.  For example, you can preview songs.  Instead of the typical 30 second clip, though, you get over a minute and a half of music.  Unlike a 30 second clip, the Amie Street clips let you really get into the song before the clip ends.

There’s also a recommendation system with “benefits.”  You get a certain number of recommendations to use as you put money into your account.  (You can earn more by referring friends to Amie Street.)  If you recommend a song and that song’s price rises, you can earn money back into your account.  For example, I recommended the song Perfect Day by Hoku when it was at 23 cents.  It’s now up to 47 cents.  I could cash out now and get 10 cents back.  This system encourages users to find good new songs and promote them.

It also allows you to find other songs to buy.  Once you find a song you like, you can look at who recommended it.  Then you can see what other songs that person has bought or recommended.  I’ve already used this system to buy music.

In my short time registered with Amie Street (about 2 weeks), I’ve bought 10 songs and spent 89 cents.  I’ve also been exposed to artists that I otherwise would have never known existed.

Curious as to what songs I’ve bought?  Well, Amie Street lets you share out your songs (or at least the sample clips of them) to whomever you want.  Here are the songs that I’ve bought as of this writing.

Oh, and if you’re wary of jumping in and spending your money right away, I found a promotional code online that gives you $2 in credit and 4 free Recommendations.  Just type instrumental into the promotion code area of the sign up page.  At the rate that I’ve been buying songs, it’s like getting 22 songs for free!

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to rock out to some tunes.