Last night I paged through the latest issue of Wired Magazine immersing myself specifically in the article: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business. That business model obviously worked for bands of Radiohead’s stature in the music industry and has been a long-held business model in the electronics/gadgets market as well, “Give away the cell phone, sell the monthly plan; make the videogame console cheap and sell expensive games; install fancy coffeemakers in offices at no charge so you can sell managers expensive coffee sachets.”

So imagine my surprise when I received a coincidental e-mail this morning from Josh at Amie Street informing me that the website is “releasing the entire catalogs of Beggars Group (XL, Rough Trade, 4AD), Matador Records and Polyvinyl Recording Co. — more than 15,000 songs.” That’s really nothing out of the ordinary, it was the second sentence in his message that caught my interest, “All songs are initially free to download and rise in price based on popularity, up to $0.98. All songs are DRM-free mp3s.”

After perusing Amie Street for some time, I was shaking my head at the, at least in my opinion, genius idea of trying to break through and survive in the already lucrative digital download arena, but strategically different in that, at these prices, they could also compete with file-sharing sites as well. Example? At time of writing, I can currently purchase Thom Yorke’s Eraser for $1.77, or approximately $0.20 per track. On top of that his fantastic series of The Eraser Remixes (all three volumes) are available on Amie Street for less than $1 each. Granted as the popularity of the site rises, so will the prices, but never to the point that they’re above iTunes (at least for now). Thus, it’s easy to understand why Amazon.com would have led “Series A round of financing in August 2007,” who already made their splash into digital downloads by offering them at the price of $.89 per track only a few months ago.

Combining Amie Street to my preferred digital retailer, eMusic, I continue to hold out hope that like-minded record label executives hear the call and follow these acts into the market if they want to see music sales, in any fashion, continue to survive, and perhaps, thrive in a different and newly defined market.

Related: David Byrne - “Addendum to recent Wired Article (Part II)”