St. Albans Graduate Opens Innovative Music Website

by Benjamin Abravanel

Peter Asbill, St. Albans Class of 2002, and a small group of Brown University graduates have created a website called Amie Street, which showcases and promotes independent artists while creating an in-house community of music fans. Amie Street, found at www.amiestreet.com and headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, uses a distinct rating system which determines price based on how many times a song has been bought. All songs start free and then, depending on a song’s popularity, go up in price, never reaching more than 98 cents. The purpose, according to the site, is not to bankrupt the buyers but to create a unique music community.

The site attempts to engage users in the community by giving them a set number of recommendations and rewarding them with free songs when the music they recommend sells well. They created the site in the hopes that people would support independent artists, buying their music when the community determines the price. “We try to turn every user into a talent scout,” said co-founder Elliott Breece.

The founders say that Amie Street not only encourages listeners to find and recommend good music, but also allows bands to promote and sell their music for free, while rewarding them for creating songs that become popular. “We designed Amie Street to help independent and emerging artists promote and sell their music in a unique, fan-driven social environment,” Breece said. “We hope musical artists of all types will find our site to be a refreshing platform that makes it easy for fans to discover and purchase their music.”

Asbill, who works for Amie Street as Director of Content Acquisition, said, “In a young start-up [company] like ours, [position] titles don’t mean much. We all do a bit of everything, basically whatever needs to be done…at one moment we could be making decisions regarding the core purpose of Amie Street and at another we could be stuffing promotional CDs. It runs the gamut from macro to micro.” Asbill “reaches out to artists, labels, and distributors in order to get their music on the site.”

Although he is constantly seeking out new music to promote, Asbill also tries to promote the music already on the site in a number of ways. One of his tasks is to write the Amie Street blog, which he says “is a funny job for me considering that I had never read a blog before working here.”

During his senior year at Brown, Asbill lived in a house off-campus with Joshua Boltuch and Elliott Breece, two of Amie Street’s co-founders and Peter’s close friends. The house was situated on Amie Street, near Brown’s campus. “They started working on this project in the spring, and though I kept up with their progress, I was doing other things, like school work and my job, that prevented me from joining in any official capacity,” said Asbill. After they all graduated, Asbill and brother Matt ’07 took a six-week road trip. While on the trip, Boltuch and Breece asked Asbill to come work at the company fulltime. He has been in Providence since August working on Amie Street as a fulltime occupation.

“My job is tight. Upsides: I get to work with friends, listen to a ton of music and work on a project that’s new, exciting and the recipient of great feedback,” said Asbill, who goes by the user name “Treetops” on Amie Street, of working at his new job. “The only downsides: Amie Street has taken over my life and I live in a small house with five thugs who don’t wash their dishes.”

Never the Nines, an independent band showcased on Amie Street, praised the founders of Amie Street, saying, “The guys at Amie Street have exactly what it takes to stand out in a sea of independent music sites. The guys are passionate, driven and professional. Being part of their showcase event was one of the best experiences we’ve had performing and we look forward to working with Amie Street in the future. If you’re an artist and you have not signed up, get to it. If you’re a music fan that wants unique access to great music sign up today.”

“I like that everybody wins. It allows me to put my music out and [make it] available to everybody on an international level, and [Amie Street doesn’t] have to break the bank and, most importantly, they become a part of it,” said Malene Younglao, another independent artist showcased on Amie Street.