How Amazon Music Is Boosting Its Presence Using Hip-hop Partnerships
According to reports from Midia, Spotify is currently the largest streaming platform with 31% of the market share, followed by Apple Music with 15%. However, right on the heels of Apple is Amazon at 13%
That’s lowkey shocking, considering that people generally opt for using free tiers of Spotify or even YouTube for their music consumption instead of paying. And this goes without mentioning Tidal, which many users prefer as an alternative to Apple or Spotify.
Regardless, numbers don’t lie as we see below.
For the past few years, Amazon’s music arm has been aggressively making moves to overtake Apple for the #2 spot on the list and their latest efforts see them aligning with music’s most popular genre right now: Hip-hop.
Their message to their competitors is clear:
AMAZON WILL BE THE PREFERRED PLATFORM FOR…
1. Consumers
By aligning with hip-hop artists, Amazon will now have the cultural cache to make moves that can give them the lead in the world of music streaming (doing things like exclusive content, limited releases for Prime members, etc.)
2. Artists
Amazon is becoming a more artist-friendly platform, allowing artists to upload their music and receive their analytics with no hassle. Their interface also makes it easy for consumers to buy/preview music on a whim, and it places them in a realm between iTunes and Bandcamp.
THINK OF AMAZON AS A BRANDED HOUSE
More to the point of Amazon being a place for musicians and artists, consider what they’ve done via their in-house labels (Amazon Music, Amazon Prime Video, Twitch, etc.). By strategically bundling services in a way that’s so convenient, it’d be hard for a current customer or an artist to turn them down. They’ve created a branded house of sorts…
Take a look at the graphic below (don’t steal my sh*t).
On one hand, regular music consumers have 3 options: music, video, and gaming (virtual concerts, exclusive soundtracks, etc.) Artists can participate in all of these things as fans, but they also have the option to either: upload music, secure a Prime video deal or stream on twitch) — all of which are top of mind for music consumers, making it a perfect match for both parties.
Remember: the music landscape is forever changing. Lifestyle is becoming the precursor to selling music, and music marketing is about creating an ecosystem of content around the art. With that in mind, it’s perfect for Amazon to involve themselves as the company with services to help an artist build that ecosystem.
And just how are they building out that ecosystem? Well…
1. They’re Reminding People of the Benefits of Amazon Prime
Towards the end of 2021, hip-hop fans were greeted to some interesting news: Kanye & Drake had set their beef aside to focus on a larger goal: Freeing former gang leader Larry Hoover from jail - an effort that Larry Hoover’s son had been working for, hoping for a compassionate release so that he can spend the final chapters of his life at home with family.
While the logistics of the performance itself were still being worked out, fans were wondering where they could see the concert. When the fliers dropped it was immediately clear:
Amazon Prime
Not only were fans more or less able to see two superstars together in concert for what could be the only time ever, but the stream was presented by Amazon - and with over 153 million people holding Amazon Prime accounts already, that meant that they could watch a pay-per-view level event for free.
For those who weren’t already signed up, seeing a once-in-a-lifetime event for 14.99 isn’t a bad deal at all. While I’m not sure if the numbers are available for how many sign-ups happened due to this event, it’d be fair to say that the Amazon Music & Prime teams both noticed an uptick in their numbers this month.
Dreamville Festival 2022
Dreamville Fest, the festival created by J. Cole & named after him & Ib’s record label “Dreamville” was expected to bring over 80,000 attendees. With the era that we’re in one can expect that random videos of the performance would float around and eventually make their way to YouTube but the Dreamville team had an idea.
Rather than have fans make illegal streams, they decided to partner with Amazon to give fans official, quality access to the livestream.
And it made perfect sense for Amazon who was building on the success of the Kanye West/Drake concert. This partnership allowed Amazon Music pushed deeper into Hip-hop performances in 2022 and just like the Ye/Drake show the stream was free for Prime users.
2. THEY’RE HELPING EXTEND THE PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE
In 2021 a trailer dropped for what would eventually become one of the best music documentaries of the year (so far).
The subject of the doc? None other than Lil Baby.
Knowing that lifestyle content is becoming more essential to music marketing, artists have begun vlogging again and some have even decided to make mini-documentaries available to fans on YouTube.
And while rap fans typically expect documentaries geared toward them to premier on free platforms, Lil Baby and Amazon made a decidedly bold move by have arguably the most popular rapper in the world right now to commit to a doing a well-produced documentary that would be exclusive to Amazon Prime.
Again, this partnership was a another stroke of genius for the Amazon team who, as mentioned earlier, have over 153 million users on Prime. It only made sense for them to further entrench themselves in rap culture and in the process (possibly) secure more prime sign-ups in the process.
WHAT IT MEANS GOING FORWARD
It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if Amazon ends up overtaking Apple for the #2 streaming service. Given what they’ve been able to accomplish in the past two years using content to propel artists to the next level it’s only a matter of time before they do Amazon exclusive LPs/singles.
At that point it’s about who has the better ecosystem: Apple or Amazon (something we’ll tackle in a future post).
Until then, check out some of the dope content Amazon is pushing out.
And of course, don’t forget to hit the link below to subscribe
Peace.