Amazon is partnering with music community startup SellaBand to offer aspiring young bands a leg up the slippery pole of fame and fortune. Under the deal, SellaBand will have a dedicated music store on Amazon as well as an affiliate sales deal and promotion to the 50 most active reviewers on The Vine, retail website’s reviewers’ programme. Revenues will be shared equally between the artists, Sellaband and the fans.

Germany-based Sellaband, which launched in August 2006, has 6,000 bands and offers a model of free legal distribution of new music by enabling a direct relationship between developing artists and their fans. The site enables fans (”believers”) to buy $10 shares in unsigned bands to fund the professional recording and distribution of an album – including A&R, marketing and publishing. In a phrase, it’s a more overtly music-focused MySpace.

But I bet you’re wondering what Sellaband does with all that cash while the band is waiting to get more fans? In fact, Sellaband is more like a bank, since it makes interest on the money invested in the site’s bands.