I was saddened by today’s news that Amie Street has been acquired (and effectively shut down) by Amazon. My former band Get Him Eat Him released our final EP as an Amie Street digital exclusive, and they were an absolute pleasure to work with — I can honestly say that we would not have sold half as many digital copies of the release without their help and support.

Though I had the utmost faith in the Amie Street team, I was always a bit skeptical towards the idea of demand-based music pricing, especially for small artists. In the five years I spent managing my own small indie band, I learned pretty quickly that the first 100 or so purchases of a new release are a crucial — and often the only — source of revenue for a band with a small fanbase.

Let’s say your band has 100 or so loyal fans who are likely to purchase your music. You put your new, home-recorded EP up on Amie Street in the hopes of making back some of the money you spent on mastering, travel, packaging, etc. You embark upon a shameless promo blitz, hitting up Twitter, Facebook and e-mail to announce that you have a new EP for sale.

Your #1 fan, who is subscribed to your e-mail list and follows you on Twitter, sees the announcement and immediately clicks over to Amie Street to buy the new EP. Given Amie Street’s pricing model, your EP is currently priced at $0.00. Sweet! Your #1 fan just got an awesome gift from his/her favorite band.

…. Or, to put it another way, the person most willing to pay for your music just got it for free.

By the time your 50 most devoted followers have purchased the EP, the price of each song has increased to $.50, which is enough to discourage your more casual fans. Your EP has climbed the Amie Street charts and gained an air of legitimacy — “hey, some people actually did pay for this, maybe I’ll check it out” — but, what could have been a quick $250 in revenue (which is not a negligible amount for a small band) is instead about $50-$100.

The problem with this sort of “demand-based” pricing is that it calculates demand as a function of group interest.  Kickstarter allows for projects to be funded on the basis of individual demand — if I love an idea and want it to exist, I can pay more to make it exist. Amie Street’s pricing model was fascinating, but it didn’t work for every artist — it addressed the problem of one-size-fits-all pricing, but it did so with a one-size-fits-all algorithm.  As an artist, I’m likely to have a pretty good idea of how much I can get away with selling my music for, what additional perks might result in more purchases, and how best to spread the word to my fans.

… which is why I will likely be spending some time tonight setting up a Get Him Eat Him store on Bandcamp. While it doesn’t offer the one-stop shopping experience of a site like Amie Street, it gives me a great deal of control over design, pricing, and audio formats — AND I get paid for each sale immediately. As iTunes continues to evolve into a complex social service, there’s something to be said for having a simple and customizable answer to the question, “hey, where can I buy your music?”