Amoeba Music Digitizes

Often we harp on and on about the dire straits the music industry finds itself. Never mind the record stores that are experiencing the fallout, too. But for every dark story there's something great happening, too. Like with L.A. and San Francisco based Amoeba Records.

According to Pitchfork and Variety the retail store has put a lot of its stuff online on a completely revamped website to sell.

The operative word here is "Sell."

from Variety:

The so-called Vinyl Vaults section -- thousands of rare and out-of-print LPs, 78s and 45s that flow through the company's three outlets in any given week -- now available for sale via download...

The entirely inhouse undertaking has taken six years, at a cost estimated by the Amoeba partners of around $11 million. The project employed some 200 people...

Amoeba is selling its Vinyl Vaults material, which can be heard in streaming samples on the site, www.amoeba.com, in three pricing tiers, reflecting the audio quality of the tracks: 78¢ per track for MP3s, 80¢ for Lossless M4As and $1.50 for WAVs.

This is awesome and a prime example of how the music industry can effectively work within the new infrastructure to remain profitable andmake sure the artists get some dosh, too.

Hopefully this means folks like R Stevie Moore Kevin Ayers , Pere Ubu and King Crimson will continue to pay the bills, let alone the popular acts, too.

long Live, Amoeba.