Bargain Basement Prices On....Metal Albums

And surprisingly good ones at that!

If you are looking for some quality metal releases to download on the cheap, then check out the Invisible Oranges blog (and you might want to bookmark that blog as it is actually a quite good one) for links to label pages on Amie St. where you can get very reasonable prices on top notch underground titles. I just got 11 albums for under $23 total and none of it shoddy material either. Amie St. has such low prices because of an interesting variable pricing system. The explanation straight from the site:

Amie Street helps you discover new music you'll love quickly and easily. With millions of songs to choose from we make it simple and enjoyable to find your next favorite song.

How do we do this? It starts with the fact that all songs on Amie Street are priced from free to 98 cents. Instead of the arbitrary $0.99 per song, on Amie Street the community determines the price of music. Every song starts free, or very cheap, and increases in price, up to 98 cents, as more and more people purchase it.

This variable pricing system ensures that the public gets music at a fair, community-driven price point, and makes it easy for you to find the type of music you want. We then encourage you to talk about the music you like by putting money in your account for more downloads when you recommend songs that continue to rise in price. You can play the music you purchase from anywhere on the web and all Amie Street downloads are iPod compatible DRM-free mp3s. Enjoy the music!

Pretty cool huh? Certainly great for those of us who like bands that are far from the mainstream (not that there is anything wrong with mainstream music....hell, I love U2 and Blink-182) as albums on Amie St. can be under $2 vs. $9.99 on Amazon or iTunes. The catch is that there selection is not nearly as good as the aforementioned top dogs in the MP3 game, but they are worth supporting in the hopes that they grow bigger and get more catalog.

And yes, I realize bit torrent is free, but I like to support the artists and labels and at the same time not break the bank (or get a computer virus).

Here is what I got (with links to Amie St. so you can see the pricing):

• Goatwhore – Carving Out The Eyes Of God
• Light This City – Stormchaser
• Shining – V. Halmstad
• T.T. Quick – Metal Of Honor
• Discordance Axis – The Inalienable Dreamless
• Clouds – We Are Above You
• Zozobra – Birds Of Prey
• Botch – American Nervoso
• Fight Amp – Manners And Praise
• Battlefields – Thresholds Of Imbalance
• Irepress – Sol Eye Sea I