Amie Street has a pretty exciting business model with some new ideas. For one, your music starts out as a free download, and the price increases as it gains in popularity. So there is more incentive for listeners to seek out new music that they may not have heard before. Their payout rate is 70% - not as high as some other sites, but not too bad, considering that there is no upfront cost to the artist. Their is a one-time $5 fee for each song that you upload, but they don't actually bill you for it. They take it out of your eventual royalty check. The minimum payout is $10. Of course, with your songs starting out for free, that could take a while. But let's not overlook this as another viable channel for pushing your music.

Their agreement gets a little hairy, as it states that you have to request removal of your material in writing, and that you must leave it up for a minimum of 60 days. Of course, they don't have to contact the artist in writing should they decide to change any of their terms - they can do that in just about any format they choose - email, text message, carrier pigeon, etc. There is also some fine print in there about having to add a link to their website from your own, but it doesn't sound ironclad so don't go hosing up your slick design if you've got no place for a link. They also reserve the right to change the price of your music at any time, so even if you get to the point where your tunes are selling well, they can decide to put it on sale if they see fit.

In a nutshell, this site is another free promotional tool, and I will consider any cash from it to be a bonus. The initial "term" of the agreement is two years, and it auto-renews yearly after that. As previously mentioned, you can request termination in writing and they get 60 days to do so. I must warn you that their terms and conditions page is probably the most thorough that I have ever run across, so it will take quite a while if you actually read it. Their head office is located in New York - I hope they're not associated with The Orchard in any way.

Their song upload interface is pretty easy to figure out, and allows you to create a queue of tracks to be uploaded, so you can enter in all of the information and then grab a bite to eat while all of the tracks are being uploaded at once. Don't forget to setup your royalty payments so that they get your Paypal payments to you. For some reason, the site kept producing a new window each time I wanted to edit something - one for my royalty settings, one for my profile info, one to add songs. That was a little annoying, but nothing too bad. As far as I can tell, you have no way of personalizing the look of your artist page, aside from adding your photos and text. But the layout is clean and loads fast, so I can't really complain.

One last note - don't forget to do a quick search on Google for Amie Street promotional codes when you sign-up. I found a $5 coupon that I can use to purchase music from other artists.