![]() According to the Wall Street Journal, when the singers Brandy and Monica competed in a high-profile Verzuz battle, the duo - through the platform NTWRK - managed to sell $230,000 of “Brandy vs. During lockdown, music streaming has led to a merch boom, and Eddy Richman, CEO of the independent artist promoter WMR Music Group, told Modern Retail that merch “is especially crucial at this current moment where tours and live shows are on hold.” Whereas people used to buy a large share of artist products at concerts and events, now streaming - plus online events - are powering those purchases. Meanwhile, from the music industry perspective, Amazon Music’s product expansion seems well timed. As some television experts previously told Modern Retail, it isn’t difficult to imagine that Amazon might soon start selling sports memorabilia directly on its platform. This week, Amazon landed exclusive rights to stream the NFL’s Thursday Night Football on Prime Video. Amazon Music has remained the fastest-growing of the major streaming services since 2019.įor Amazon, adding merch to Amazon Music might be a sign of much more to come in the streaming space. Still, Amazon’s dominance in the audio space, especially thanks to the growing popularity of Alexa devices, has helped it make up for lost time. At the same time, Amazon Music also added podcasts to its platform, a move that culminated with the acquisition of podcast maker Wondery at the end of last year.Īmazon Music first launched in 2007 as a MP3 store in the vein of iTunes, but it didn’t add in a streaming service until 2016 - far later than most of its competitors. In the last few months, as Amazon Music continues to surge, the company has continued to integrate other aspects of its business with it: in September, for instance, Amazon added livestreams from Amazon-owned Twitch into the Amazon Music app, so that artists can do live performances or streams with fans. According to research published by Counterpoint last year, Amazon Music claimed 12% of all streaming revenue - still below Apple (25%) and Spotify (30%), but above both YouTube Music (9%) and Pandora (5%). In terms of size, Amazon Music remains a third-place competitor to Apple Music and Spotify, but it isn’t as distant of a third as it once was. Although Spotify and YouTube each partner with Merchbar, “they don’t have the exclusive merch deals that Amazon now has,” Samadpour said. Instead, he said, the biggest draw for Amazon may be the existence of exclusive products - which adds another reason to subscribe to Amazon Music. “It’s a natural progression for them.”Īccording to Samadpour, the ease of sale of merchandise on Amazon Music could help some artists move more products, but he said that those sales were unlikely to drive big enough revenue numbers to matter to a behemoth like Amazon. “Amazon already has the infrastructure in place to handle the production and fulfillment of artist merch,” Ali Samadpour, founder of the music marketing firm Prescient Digital, said in an email to Modern Retail. It also shows the way in which Amazon, as its empire expands, is tying consumer products more deeply into its ecosystem. ![]() Until now, Amazon Music has remained distinct from the company’s larger e-commerce business, but this recent development suggests that these two sides of the platform may become more tightly integrated down the line. That requires slightly more friction than buying from Amazon Music, which lets people make a purchase on the same panel as they are streaming. The difference is that clicking to purchase those items on Spotify sends customers to a third-party company called Merchbar. Spotify artists can add products to their artist profiles. Amazon isn’t the only company to tie merch with music streaming.
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