Amie Street is a music website with a difference — the prices for downloading songs are not fixed, but are determined by their popularity. The price for a song varies between free and 98 US cents. Unpopular songs are free, and the price rises the more popular they get. This seems like a very clever idea to me. The biggest problem for new musicians is getting noticed. If your songs are free, that can help to offset (to some extent) the fact that you’re unknown. This pricing model also gives users an incentive to search out the best music, since if you can find a great song before it becomes popular you can get it for free or very cheap. For other users the price of a song is a good guide to its popularity — the price is high only because enough people have been willing to buy it previously. You can also earn credits on the site by recommending songs.

One complaint I have is that the pricing formula isn’t disclosed. This makes the price information less useful. Is a 60 cent song twice as popular as a 30 cent song? As a musician, how popular do I have to get before I receive 98 cents per song? I also wonder if prices are allowed to fall once they have gone up, if a song becomes unpopular, as it is bound to do? Or do prices just go up and stay up forever? Regardless, it looks like a very interesting system, both for musicians and listeners.