Amie Street was created in 2006 as an online indie music store and social network. The founders included Brown University’s senior students Elliott Breece, Elias Roman, and Joshua Boltuch. After its launch, the company took off and entered into deals with many record labels including CD Baby, The Orchard, Daptone Records, and more.
The website became known for its demand-based pricing where song prices started at zero and increased a few cents with each download. When Amie Street was launched, it was the only company offering DRM-free MP3s. All this and more had made it an appealing website in the online music scene for music enthusiasts.
Over the years, the company was able to build an impressive library of music and even released its own streaming Web Player. The website might not have reached the popularity of iTunes but it was able to carve out a niche for itself.
In 2010, Amazon acquired the online music store Amie Street. While the news was shocking to some users, it was not that surprising as Amazon had been investing in the website for a long time. It only made sense that it would eventually take over. However, after the acquisition, fans were in for another surprise as Amazon closed down the website altogether.
Amie Street founders explained in a letter to customers that the site would no longer remain operational and advised them to download their purchased music before the closing date. Despite the closure of its website, Amie Street was going to continue to focus on a new social music service called Songza. Songza had been an independent music service before it was bought by Amie Street itself in 2008.
CEO of Amie Street revealed that Songza would be a social music service that would allow users to share their music with their friends and collaborate with people to create custom-built radio stations. Users would be able to stream more than 8 million songs from a wide selection of stations that matched their interests.
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