Musical Capital

Music is very important to us at Student Nerds. Klear has started a new weekly column that gives you an idea of what’s spinning on our iPods.  But what if our eclectic picks aren’t enough to fill your week?

Music recommendations have always been notoriously low-fi.  Usually you’d turn to a particular buddy in your group, “the music guy.” The music guy was the one with a subscription to Rolling Stone, Blender, Spin, Chamber Music Weekly.  He’d be the one who every other night was going to some show in the far suburbs of a band that didn’t even have T-shirts yet.  But what if your tastes and Music Guys differ? Would you be forced to quit your job and listen incessantly to alternative FM radio?

Ever since music distribution has gone online, so have music recommendations. Sure most sites still have areas where you can leave you feedback on a song, but how do we know that Joe from Nevada is a good proxy for your tastes? Music sites have tried in a number of different ways to become your online “music guy”

Amazon has a classic “see what other have bought” feature, handy but very unscientific, and potentially confusing if enough fans of the Pouges also have 9 year old daughters who like the Jonas Brothers.  

Last.FM takes this idea slight further, trading purchase driven recommendations for “listen-to” suggestions and adding a social element by which a “neighborhood” of people with similar tastes are group together and allows you to explore their libraries and mixtapes.  One downside to the Last.FM model is that if you listen to a variety of genres or your tastes change, the effectiveness of your neighborhood is decreased.

iTunes has included in its newest release, a “Genius” feature which combines the ratings of its users, with purchase and listen patterns.  I’ve enjoyed using Genius, but am bother by how driven it is by selling new music versus the discovery aspect.  

While all of these recommendation services have their place, when I’m looking to broaden my musical horizons, or just when my playlists are getting a bit stale, I turn to Amie Street

Amie Street has a unique distribution and recommendation model that provides direct financial incentive to both music creators and distributors, but also to consumers.  Here’s how it works:

An artist or label uploads a song or album to Amie street, that track is assigned a value from $0.00 to $0.99, depending on that artists history and reputation.  As consumers buy that song, the price of the song increases, (though no one song ever exceeds $0.99).  Artists and labels get a cut of their sales, so they are incentivized to upload good music.  Further, this pricing tool acts as a signaling device, if a song has been available for 6 months and is priced at $0.05, then it’s probably a dog, if it’s a new release and already at $0.98 like this of Montreal track, then at least you know it’s not nails on a chalkboard. 

This pricing scheme is valuable in itself, but Amie Street takes it a bit further, by paying people to become your music guy.  They have created a unique recommendation systems where you use a limited number of “REC”  flags to recommend individual tracks and comment on them.  As these tracks are downloaded (or not), their prices goes up, as does a metric that is used to measure your value as a recommender, you “street cred.” More importantly, as money is made off these tracks, a percentage of it is credited to your account.   As your RECs become more and more influential, you can actually buy and REC more music.  If you’re good, you can actually start a cottage industry as a music critic. 

Amie Street does have a few draw backs however.  They lack the breadth of mainstream content that the other services have, and there’s an inherent feedback risk in the REC system where the site can become increasing focused on one genre or sub-genre and limit it’s value.  But as a way of discovering  and purchasing new music, as well as a unique and social business model, I think Amie Street is way ahead of then curve, and a great way to go online to get and become a “Music Guy”