In what would come in as a serious validation for the re-emerging podcast sector, Amazon Music has today announced the introduction of podcasts to its streaming platform, at no additional costs. The service is being launched across the US, UK, Japan, Germany, and will also possess Amazon’s own programming to back it up.
Listeners will be able to tune in to popular podcasts that they are already familiar with and also newer ones that are exclusively produced for Amazon Music. Expectations are soaring high after Amazon’s announcement of a plethora of content hosted by hugely popular artists like Will Smith, D.J Khaled, Dan Patrick, Becky G, and more.
VP of Amazon Music, Steve Boom announced, that on release, Amazon Music will have an enormous variety of popular content to offer to its listeners, as the company tries to keep up with its user’s evolving taste and aims to provide a rich experience rooted in music and entertainment.
Amazon claims that the app will have “millions” of episodes from cult classic titles to offer to their listeners, with the likes of “What a day”, “Radiolab”, Revisionist History”, “Planet Money”, “Why won’t you date me? hosted by Nicole Byers”, “Crime Junkie” being few of the names that are already available for their users to tune in to. With newer titles and episodes being added continuously to the ever-expanding library. Earlier this year, Amazon had announced that over 55 million users are part of its Music service, thus making it quintessential for any podcaster to be a part of the service.
Amazon Music has also announced something that would tickle the fancy of both music lovers and true crime aficionados, as the platform is set to host a music-meets-true crime podcast “Disgraceland”, a show dedicated to exploring the criminal antics and connections of some of music’s beloved personalities. Disgraceland will be made available to stream on the Amazon Music app from February 2021.
Among the exclusive original titles that are set to be on offer, DJ Khaled, one of the largest hit-makers of the current generation is set to host his own podcast, “The First One”. Where the superstar DJ will host some of his favorite artists and interview them about the music that made them iconic and eventually gave them legendary status. Next on the line is Becky G’s “En la Sala,” a podcast that will see the iconic diva host some of the biggest names in music right now, and interview them on everything form women empowerment, LGBTQ+ rights, Latinx pride to sports, and relationships. The podcast will also have a corresponding video broadcast that will be streamed on Amazon Music’s Twitch channel.
With the podcast feature being made available to access on both Amazon Music’s mobile app and web player, customers will be able to discover newer titles in their podcast choices, through top podcast charts and recommendation lists carefully created based on the user’s listening preferences.
Amazon is confident about providing the maximum level of ease to the user in finding and accessing their preferred podcasts, regardless of which medium the user chooses to access the feature through.
However, the introduction of this new podcast feature to Amazon Music could very well ring danger bells for its direct competitor Spotify, as the hugely popular music streaming app has seen a 3% fall in its share rates since Amazon’s announcement.
