Amie Street Interview with Joshua Boltuch

After ad:tech, I met up with Joshua Boltuch from Amie Street. Amie Street is the destination for independent music. We actually met at a cafe near NYU which claims to have the first ever cappucino machine, Cafe Reggio. Great atmosphere and when you listen to the audio you will hear some of it :). Joshua is very bright and seems to have all of the ducks in a row for Amie Street to be a great success.

Highlights of our discussion include:

• Brief bio about Joshua
• Background on Amie Street, motivation, factors for creating Amie Street
• Insider information on where the name came from, it’s a play on Wall St.
• Competitor information
• Detailed explanation of the Amie Street pricing model
• Gaming the pricing system
• Big name artists on Amie Street?
• Finding music on Amie Street vs. iTunes
• Quality of the bands on Amie Street
• What does the artist make on Amie Street? (70/30 split, no upfront fees)
• Copyright and DRM issues
• Video?
• Future of digital music
• Hooking up bands with their loyals (Amie Street Showcases)
• Marketing plan besides TechCrunch listing?
• Feedback requests, they want user feedback
• Referral marketing
• Biggest mistake to-date with Amie Street (besides not hiring me as a consultant)
• Funded / Unfunded
• Overview of the recommendations system
• Power user overview

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Click the start button below to begin the audio interview (18 minutes) (or download the mp3):

Joshua even recommended some artists to me:

• State Radio
• Tita Lima
• Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
• epochs