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Amazon not interested in becoming a record label

By | Published on Thursday 18 May 2017

Amazon Echo Show

Shut up, Amazon doesn’t even want to be a record label. So says Amazon Music Vice President Steve Boom.

Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2017, Boom said that he’s often asked about the possibility of Amazon launching a record label, in part due to the company’s film and television production division. However, it’s not something the company is currently interested in getting into.

“The labels really play an important part in the world, and it’s not really in our interest to displace them”, he said.

It’s more interested in riding the wave of growth in the streaming market, saying that IFPI figures showing that there are now nearly 100 million paying streaming subscribers worldwide is just the beginning.

“It’s literally just a drop in the bucket”, said Boom, literally using the word ‘literally’ incorrectly. “So we think there’s a ton of growth but what we do see is pretty clearly already happening. For music streaming services focused on discovery and playback, it is consolidating around a relatively small number of global platforms and I think that trend is happening and I would expect it to continue to happen”.

Amazon’s secret weapon in gaining market share is its Echo digital assistant device, he reckons. He said: “In the smartphone era, we think of music as moving out of the home and living room. With voice, it’s moving it back in”.

Last week Amazon launched its latest Echo device, the Echo Show, which features a screen and will show you the lyrics to songs you order it to play for you from Amazon’s on-demand streaming service.



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