Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime

Decoder with Nilay Patel

I love covering the music industry, but over the past 10 years I’ve found that it’s one of the most challenging things to make accessible to a wide audience. See, my theory is that the music industry is like five years ahead of everything else when it comes to being disrupted by tech: whatever happens to the music industry because of technology eventually happens to everything else.

Today I'm talking to Steve Boom, the VP of Amazon Music. Amazon just announced that they are upgrading the music service that Prime members get as part of their subscription. Starting today, one of the benefits for Amazon Prime members is that you now get access to the entire Amazon Music catalog, about 100 million songs, to play in shuffle mode. That service used to only contain 2 million songs. And they are removing ads from a large selection of podcasts including the entire Wondery catalog.

I wanted to ask Steve: what’s it like to negotiate with the record labels for a service like this? What can streaming services do to make artists more money? And where do podcasts fit into the overall strategy? Amazon and Spotify both spend a lot of money buying podcast studios. Is it paying off?

Links:

Amazon buys Wondery, setting itself up to compete against Spotify for podcast domination

Apple’s Anti-Competitive Behavior Hurts Everyone—Including Audiobook Listeners, Publishers, and Authors

Why Rdio died

Why it makes sense for Amazon to buy Twitch

Amazon Launches Audio App Amp Combining Music and Live Conversation

The days of cheap music streaming may be numbered

Why did Jack Dorsey’s Square buy Tidal, Jay-Z’s failed music service?

Amazon Music rolls out a lossless streaming tier that Spotify and Apple can’t match

How Amazon runs Alexa, with Dave Limp

Apple’s new podcast charts show Amazon at the top

Spotify gets serious about podcasts with two acquisitions

Vox Media acquires Cafe Studios, Preet Bharara’s podcast-first company

Vox Media Acquires Criminal Productions, Leading Narrative Podcast Studio

Time to Play Fair - Spotify

Apple’s New App Store Rules a Big Boon for Netflix, Hulu & Co.

MusiCares

Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/23197384

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

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