Online retail giant Amazon.com has acquired Amie Street’s indie music marketplace business. Unfortunately for the startup’s users, the paid download service is also getting canned in the process.

Amie Street launched its marketplace in 2006 with a unique DRM-free pricing scheme: Artists listed songs for download that started at $0, and then increased in price gradually to $0.99 as they became more popular. Although the site never became a giant like iTunes or Amazon MP3, it maintained a loyal user base.

Amazon helped fund Amie Street’s innovative idea back in 2007. The terms of the recent acquisition were not disclosed.

Amazon will be shutting down the marketplace officially on September 22. Amiestreet.com currently features a “down for maintenance” message. According to Amazon, former Amie Street marketplace users will be directed to a Amie Street/Amazon Music Service landing page, and will receive a $5 credit to the Amazon MP3 store that will be good until December 1st. Amie Street credit will not carry over.

“We believe we’ve found a great home for AmieStreet.com and are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible,” wrote Amie Street’s founders in a message to users.

Amie Street’s famous payment scheme may be going the way of the dodo, but their dev team isn’t going away. Amie Street as a company will remain independent, and the team will focus its efforts on Songza, a social music service that was purchased by the company in 2008.

Songza is similar to streaming radio services such as Pandora, but it includes a mechanism that allows listeners to make song requests the each stream’s creator. The Songza service is currently in open beta.