Nonwrestler Blog

Going nuts MP3 shopping

I stumbled upon an MP3 shopping site called Amie St , which works on the premise that songs are initially free and increase in price as demand goes up, i.e. as more people download. Alongside that when customers sign up with some credit they also get "RECs", so they can tag a song as one they recommend and write a little blurb about why they like it. If the price goes up they get additional credit. So basically it's encouraging customer-driven promotion and customers to check out unknown stuff.

Intrigued, I had a chat with Shanan and we agreed to put our Montano album up there. It's kinda stalled after slipping over the threshold into pay-per-download, which seems to be the case for most any unknown material out there. So am not sure about the artist side of it being so beneficial for complete unknowns. For that matter I don't think there's any electronica that's actually making returns, beyond some Ninja Tune crap, but I may be wrong.

Still, on the customer side of it I'm totally hooked. Having got the cable modem set up at home I've got the latest downloads page as my home page and keep checking in to see what I can grab while it's still dirt cheap. I've downloaded a lot of stuff that I've quite liked but never been so moved as to buy at full price in the past, a few things I would've bought on sight at full price, and a bunch of cool things I'd never heard of before. Plus some absolute horse shit. :)

Highlights:

• Antiguo Automata Mexicano's Kraut Slut for free. Have to update my best of 2007 list, this is absolutely superb micro-house / ambient-techno / modifier-noun stuff from Mexico (duh)
  
• Mudd's Claremont 56 for free. As above, absolutely superb 2007 release, this time in the realms of ballearic / beard disco / whatever. Strange mix of slow motion disco, blistering guitar solos and whatever else. Hm. Suits the sunny weather.
  
• Ridiculous amounts of Big Dada's back catalogue, including every Roots Manuva album, every TTC album, both Ty albums, and something from Company Flow's Bigg Jus, all for free.
  
• Completed my Dabrye collection, with his first album and the 12" with the Prefuse 73 remix for free. Dunno why I thought this stuff wasn't worth picking up, it's almost as good as Instrmntl.
  
• Lots of other Ghostly International / Spectral Sound 12"s that I wouldn't bother to buy on vinyl, but which often have a couple of great tunes on them.
  
• J Dilla's Ruff Draft for US$8. Lots more Stones Throw stuff there, but I already have the ones I wanted to get. Keep vacillating over getting Aloe Blacc's album.
  
• A huge Roedelius retrospective for free, going back to Kluster, Cluster, his collabs with Brian Eno and whatever else. Some of it even sounds good.
  

There're lots of things I don't like about how the site works, but it's suckered me. Kind of like watching Lost, I s'pose. ;) Plus they've just published me waxing lyrical about DJ Vadim for extra credit, so I guess I'm on the payroll now. ;)

It's funny, this has curbed my illegal downloading a fair amount.

Labels: misc time-wasting, music

Posted at 11:55