Joshua Boltuch is the co-founder and Director of Sales and Marketing of Amie Street, an independant music service. He graduated from Brown University in 2006 after majoring in English Literature. The company was launched on July 4, 2006 by Joshua and two other Brown University seniors, Elliott Breece and Elias Roman. Visit his Amie Street profile here.

Do you think the current music industry is flawed and failing? What are the weaknesses you see, and how does Amie Street solve them?

It depends how you define the music industry. Obviously the big five record companies are in a period of transition, and I think they are beginning to realize that digital rights management (DRM) is not the best way to deal with piracy. Amie Street's intention is to price music under the cost of piracy, and we don't use any DRM. Stealing music does have a cost, whether it's the time it takes to find the music, the viruses you can download, or the risk you are taking of getting caught and prosecuted. The RIAA has shown that it will even sue a 12-year-old girl for pirating music.

That's why we decided to have all songs on Amie Street start free and go up in price the more they are purchased. Most people would rather pay ten cents for a song and download it in seconds then spend ten, twenty, thirty minutes searching for the song, getting corrupt files, and so on. Plus they know we're not a big five record company, that once they buy the song it's theirs without any DRM, they own it, and that artists get 70% of every song sale.

So there are certainly flaws in the music industry. What's exciting, though, is that the Internet and new web applications are allowing musicians and listeners to have a different kind of music experience online. Our network drives music discovery and e-commerce. The Amie Street social network is the business model.

How do you predict music distribution will be different in 10 or 20 years?

That's so hard, but I'm sure it will be awesome, and I hope Amie Street is still around.

What changes do you see happening in independent music, and what effect do websites like Amie Street have on it?

I think the biggest change is how much more accessible independent music is. Artists don't need a record company to distribute their music to millions of people all over the world. Amie Street allows artists to build their fan-base and is a platform for these artists to gain more attention than they ever could before. We created Amie Street for independent music, both fans and artists. We are working to give our artists a large but very well organized network to help build momentum and more listeners, and as many tools as possible to help them be successful. And we give our listeners quality music at great prices, and the tools to help them find exactly what they want. The Amie Street network is great for musicians to increase their exposure and great for members because they can find music the way most of us do, by what our friends recommend.