NY-based music download service Amie Street is announcing a partnership with hip-hop artists Romeo and Akon today. The partnership will bring Romeo and Akon’s new song, "Get Low Wit It (featuring Akon)" to Amie Street customers at no charge. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

This type of partnership deal is important for Amie Street. It helps Amie Street get a buzz boost which in-turn can drive users to visit other artists featured on the site. The company claims "tens of thousands" of other artists are featured on Amie Street where songs start free and can go up to a maximum of 98 cents. The 98 cent cap is to keep the price one penny below iTunes.

Check out my interview with Amie Street co-founder Joshua Boltuch and the Amie Street nextNYers video interview.

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This week on nextNYers, Meghan sits down with NY-based Amie Street founders Elias Roman and Joshua Boltuch. Amie Street helps you find new music. Elias notes that the biggest competitor to Amie Street is actually the p2p music networks. In addition to the video interview below, check out my interview with Joshua from earlier this year.

Music on Amie Street starts free and goes up in price up to 99 cents as more people download the songs. They are also announcing expansions with Amie Street Japan and corporate sponsorships.

Check out the video interview:

Check out all of the previous nextNYers episodes along with our review of online video in NYC.

Find more stories about: Amie Street, drm, Interviews, music, nextNYers, NYC

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

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