Today, Amazon has announced that two of its largest media offerings - Twitch and Amazon Music - are coming together, as a way to help music fans connect with artists. Through the integration of Twitch live streaming into the Amazon Music app, listeners will be able to tune in to live music shows or experiences in the same place where they stream music on-demand, so they don"t have to purposely visit Twitch for the same effect.
This kind of experience makes more sense during this time, when many people can"t or don"t feel safe going out to major in-person events like concerts. The goal is to help artists continue to perform live in some way, and reach their target audience by bringing the live streaming capabilities into the existing music platform, which has over 55 million customers. Artists can connect their music account with Twitch to start benefiting from the integration.
Ryan Redington, Director of Amazon Music, said:
“The combination of live streaming, coupled with the on-demand playback of songs on Amazon Music is groundbreaking (...). We’re providing artists with more tools to instantly engage with fans, and this new feature couldn’t arrive at a more crucial time in the industry. More than 1,000 artists have already connected their Amazon Music accounts to Twitch, and this is just day one. Together with Twitch, we’re making it possible for artists across all genres, at all moments of their careers, to harness the social power of live streaming to create more engagement with their recorded catalog.”
Amazon has owned Twitch for quite some time, but the online retail giant has been working to integrate Twitch more deeply with the Amazon brand. Recently, the Twitch Prime subscription became known as Amazon Prime Gaming.