Amazon's new music app Amp: initial thoughts
The latest entrant into the social audio space has potential if it can work out the kinks
Amp is the latest entrant in the ever growing social audio space. Led by Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, and a few others a year ago, Amazon decided to throw its hat in the ring with their audio platform which tries to embrace music curation. Conceptually, it’s brilliant - who doesn’t love music? And Amazon plugs in their vast catalog of music via their Music Unlimited service to choose from. It definitely looks like a play to take a piece of the audience away from Spotify and other music services. I’ve spent a good week on the platform, listening to a wide range of content creators across genres, and also trying to launch a few shows myself. What follows is a rough notes list of observations.
Format
First one has to download the app, which is currently iOS only. It’s early days for Amp, and for obvious reasons, they are following the Clubhouse playbook, releasing first on Apple devices. There is no option to listen on the web, and the social sharing features are limited to screenshots like the one above. There’s an easy hack to share one’s creator profile, which you have to do manually as there’s no way to share from the app itself. You also have to either create an Amazon account, or login with an existing one, which also isn’t surprising, since the expectation is that this will eventually tie-into Amazon’s Prime ecosystem. I can see this platform adopting some of the same mechanisms as Twitch, Amazon’s livestreaming platform.
Once you create an account, you can either tune-in to a carousel of shows in a variety of curator-created genres. Most creators so far don’t have much of an audience (me included). This is a key hiccup, because the way the app works, you can’t launch your show and play music unless you have at least one listener. When I tried a test show, I found myself sitting there for minutes waiting for someone to join. Here’s the thing: even after you get that first listener, if that person leaves, you can’t play the NEXT song in your queue. Talk about killing the vibe. This is a major flaw in the process. If you’ve been longing to play that dream mixtape you’ve always wanted, but have to stop intermittently, it’s a total buzzkill. The most popular creators so far seem to be recruited from platforms like TikTok and YouTube. These creators already have tens of thousands of fans which they can leverage to come over to Amp. But even these mega-influencers only draw 20-30 listeners at most. I realize it’s early days for Amp, but I’d love to see the following changes implemented to keep small creators on the platform.
Suggestions
Allow creators to start the show without waiting for first listener
Auto-play music queue
Create ability to assemble/import music queue off-app, like via Amazon Music playlists
As a listener, allow me to save a track to my own playlist
Improve social sharing and discovery to help creators build an audience
Implement a “tip jar” feature to help creators monetize
Implement a “raid” feature like Twitch has where creators can send their audience to another show immediately after their show ends
I think Amp has a lot of potential to disrupt the social audio space. As a beta tester of services like Twitter Spaces, I’ve encountered the challenges of a “talk-only” format. It takes a lot of effort to hold a quality space. Amp tries to create more of a “ambient audio” type of vibe. I often have the app open in the morning when I’m showering, getting breakfast ready, or driving to work. Not having to allocate mental “bandwidth” to paying attention to the topic of conversation, and instead being able to multi-task is a game changer. I can see Amp eventually disrupting commercial FM radio in the same way Twitch has replaced TV watching for many consumers. Time will tell. Amazon is notorious for pulling new concepts quickly if it doesn’t hit its internal metrics (see Mixer and it’s numerous video game efforts as examples).
For now, it’s an app I keep playing in the background on my iPhone throughout my workday. I hope it sticks around and gives content creators a reason to help it scale.