Monthly Archives: July 2023

Last spring, Amazon launched its long-rumored live audio-streaming platform, Amp. The pitch was to reinvent radio with “an infinite dial of shows.” Amp offers users access to a vast, built-in music library to create their own DJ sets with. No need to buy songs or flirt with the DMCA, just make a playlist, go live, talk in between tracks, follow the chat and even invite callers. When I wrote about it a year ago, it showed promise, but it was iOS only, light on users and had a limited feature set.

A little over a year later and Amp is reaching an important milestone: It’s finally available on Android. Amp is Amazon’s first home-grown streaming platform and the year-plus stint as an Apple exclusive meant it enjoyed a level of technical predictability and a self-imposed restriction on growth and user numbers. But as the doors open to the other half of the mobile universe, it’s about to be exposed to the full reality of competing in an already busy social-creator landscape.

Growing beyond iOS is an important move for Amp, even if the platform technically remains in beta (and US-only). But the wider reach of Google’s operating system — from TVs to Chromebooks and beyond — will be a decisive step in the process of Amazon proving it can build a viable streaming platform from the ground up (rather than acquire an already successful one).

You can, of course, find DJ sessions and internet radio in myriad places online. Whether it’s big platforms like YouTube and TikTok or more direct rivals like Stationhead or Tidal (via its Live Sessions feature) and even Amazon Music’s own DJ Mode, there are several destinations for live curated music streams. Of course, let’s not forget Amazon-owned Twitch, which is teeming with tune spinners. Oh, and there’s obviously FM radio, too. This obviously begs the question: What makes Amp unique?

“It’s very much like Sirius meets YouTube,” Zach Sang, one of Amp’s contracted creators, and former broadcast DJ told Engadget. “It’s real life, legacy career broadcasters mixed with the future of those broadcasters. It’s everybody coming together, it’s radio democratized. It’s a way that radio genuinely should be programmed: for people and not for profit,” he added. From a user’s point of view, Amp’s main differentiator appears to be its focus on radio and radio-style shows specifically. Plus that built-in music library (Stationhead, for example, requires you to have either Apple Music or Spotify at your own cost).

I asked user Christina “Criti” Gonzalez, who hosts her own daily show, how she’d describe Amp. “[It’s] a very unique, weird place where you’re able to listen to all the music you’ve forgotten about, didn’t know about and crave to hear, again with personalities and so many people of all different walks of life that have one common interest – music.”

Amp Co-Founder, Matt Sandler – who used to work at LA’s KROQ FM – explained that he felt all of the existing options weren’t quite giving listeners or creators what they wanted. “If you posted a job for KROQ and an on air position, you’d get hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of submissions and people who wanted to curate music and talk to the community on air,” he told Engadget. “There have been lots of services built around live connection or music or community. One of the things that I think will drive the success of a business like this is really that balance between scale and connection.”

Amp signed deals with celebrities and established presenters such as Nicki Minaj, Joe Budden, Nick Cannon and the aforementioned Sang to give the platform some known-name appeal, and it’s done so without creating much of a barrier around them compared to regular creators. Your show can sit right next to Nicki Minaj’s in the listings. Although the roster covers large genres like hip-hop, sports, country and pop there’s not much in the way of alt/indie or electronic in that lineup right now.

Unlike Clubhouse, which enjoyed an early surge of popularity, Amp has largely gone under the radar since launch. “The thing we’re maniacally focused on every day is making sure that the product is right before stepping out and bigger and bigger fashion,” Sandler said. But many people I’ve mentioned it to aren’t aware of it – and Amp’s not even included on the list of Amazon products/services Wikipedia page.

The app is clearly a lot busier than when I wrote about it just after launch, but the average number of listeners for most shows remains frustratingly low for most shows (based on multiple user reports and other publicly visible data). But several users explained they weren’t discouraged. “The community that it has right now, it’s a small enough space for people to feel like they’re connected, even if they don’t know each other.” Gonzalez said.

At the beginning, according to Sandler, even Amp’s leadership was unsure in which direction the platform would unfold. There was the possibility that the big-name artists would dominate while regular users gravitated to being listeners. In reality, it’s the smaller, home-grown shows and the aforementioned community that has made Amp a nice place to hang out.

“The culture there is so inviting.” Gonzalez said. “I feel like other social media sites can turn negative quickly. I haven’t had much experience with that on Amp and I appreciate that.” Adding, ”It’s crazy what the experience on Amp has done, because I truly honestly say to anyone that’s not an Amp to join it, because it really will change your perspective.”

One of the main complaints I had with Amp right after launch was that hosts needed at least one listener to be able to play a song and often that meant… waiting. There was also no way to communicate with any listeners you did have. Today the awkward waits are (mostly) gone and each stream has its own chat room which has switched it from a one-directional platform to the collection of friendly gatherings that it has become today.

Several creators and listeners have told me they’ve created genuine connections and friendships that have spilled over into real life. The chat rooms in shows are a rare mix of positivity, musical discourse and humor. Trolling and negativity is unusually rare and it’s obvious there’s a real sense of commitment to the app. But at some point it needs to expand to stop it becoming a circular economy where everyone is both a host and a listener.

Amp doesn’t share information about user numbers or demographics, but the typical host and listener right now, perhaps unsurprisingly, appears to mirror the generations that were brought up on mix tapes and burning albums to CD. Where sharing music was more tactile and a little bit slower. In the nicest possible way, the community energy often feels like the best bits of early internet chat rooms. Like many music-first spaces online, there’s little in the way of negativity, and while many creators may fall into a similar age group, a variety of backgrounds has been a defining factor since day one.

The positive community is Amp’s to lose though. As it opens up to Android, the door to even more users opens, and with that the challenge of scaling up the platform while maintaining what keeps it special. And there’s also the matter of money. Right now, Amp pays out many of its hosts via an opaque creator fund. “One of the things that we’re focused on is making sure that creators can earn through the service over time, not just through the fund, but through other mechanisms as well.” Sandler said. When I asked about subs, tipping and other Twitch-esque ways to earn money he added “Those are all things you could easily imagine in the service.”

For now, the creator fund is helping keep hosts motivated, but Amp will need to provide realistic alternative revenue streams to keep creators around (and, of course, lure in more). But perhaps the bigger investment Amp needs is in itself. It’s hard to find much in the way of outward promotion of the app and the best tool for promoting its best creators are its own social channels. If Amp can make itself more visible, it can grow the user base which in turn makes that creator economy, be it tipping, subs and beyond, more viable.

There are also occasional technical issues that remind you the app is still in beta, which an injection of new users, on a new operating system no less, might exacerbate. Mostly, it’s small annoyances like the chat swallowing your last message. Occasionally, it’s more dramatic like a stream crashing or a host being booted out of their own show.

“The glitchiness causes some frustration. And, sometimes that can change your experience doing the show and with others listening. So once those kinks get ironed out, I feel like the creators will feel more comfortable and less anxious while they’re doing sets” Gonzalez said. Users have even coined the phrase “Amp be Ampin’” as a refrain to the inevitable quirkiness that happens every couple of weeks or after an update.

Where does the app go from here? “I think there’s a big opportunity for amp specifically to move charts and culture around the world. And that means personalities, spinning music, having conversations and developing communities that exist in the app but that have social currency outside of the app as well.” Sandler said. Sang on the other hand thinks it’s a way to keep the spirit of radio going. “It’s not like there’s any major radio stars on the come up. So it’s like, where are they going to come from? Let them come from Amp.”

Or, as Gonzalez was quick to point out, sometimes, it’s just about the music. “There are certain creators that talk through their experience or a memory or something like that. And it completely changes how I looked at the song to begin with” she said. “I love the community so much, but it’s also just the variety, being exposed to certain genres. So I love that and ever since I’ve been really addicted.”

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Sean Hannity is rarely on the same frequency as liberal Democratic lawmakers. Nor does he usually support legislation that makes demands on the private sector.

But the conservative Fox News star and radio host is cheering on the efforts of Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., to require car manufacturers to keep the AM dial in their vehicles.

Hannity’s daily program reaches more than 13 million terrestrial radio listeners a week, mostly on AM stations, which face obsolescence as major car manufacturers such as Volkswagen, Volvo and Tesla remove the band from their electric vehicles.

“What they’re trying to do would impact political opinion to a very big extent,” Hannity said in a recent phone interview. “Thankfully, there are even Democrats who see the importance of this.”

It’s not just conservative hosts who would feel the sting of losing AM, a communications source for more than 100 years. While AM stations have seen their audience migrate to podcasts, satellite radio and streaming, they still provide a free-to-listen voice for underrepresented communities and remain a reliable source of public safety information in emergencies.

Markey has responded to the threat with the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, which would require all cars sold in the U.S. to provide the band in their dashboards. The bill — co-sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and supported by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — will go to the Senate floor in some form for a full vote later this year. The bill last week passed the Senate Commerce Committee.

The legislation would place a burden on automakers. Car manufacturers say motors in electric vehicles generate electromagnetic interference that causes static in AM station signals. Instead of investing in workarounds that would solve the interference problem, they have chosen to eliminate the band, noting the other audio options that are available to consumers.

Scott A. Schmidt, vice president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a lobbying group for the auto industry, told Washington legislators at a June hearing that there are safety alert systems included in digital audio services that can serve drivers who don’t have AM radio.

As for the proposed requirement to keep AM in cars, Schmidt said “mandates are a blunt instrument” especially for a technology that “has declining listenership.”

Markey supports the move to electric vehicles as a way to address the climate crisis and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but doesn’t believe AM should be sacrificed as a result. The National Assn. of Broadcasters, the lobbying group that represents TV and radio station owners, threw its support behind the bill.

Michael Harrison, a consultant and editor of the radio industry journal Talkers, said technological obsolescence is a fact of life in media. But he believes it’s a miscalculation to give up on AM radio in cars when one in three Americans tune in to the band every month, according to Nielsen data. Plus, it still functions as a platform for free speech and information vital to the public.

Three-quarters of AM listening occurs in cars, so losing its place on the dashboard would ultimately chip away at the available audience and disrupt listener habits. Losing more audience would intensify the financial pressure on AM station owners, some of whom have shut their outlets down in recent years.

“The car makers got rid of 8-track tape players, they got rid of cassette players, they got rid of CD players and rightfully so,” Harrison said. “They didn’t realize that the AM radio has far more cultural roots and underpinnings and far more meaning and applicability than those other dashboard devices.”

AM stands for amplitude modulation, used to transmit information in a radio wave. The very first commercial radio broadcast — a report on the results of the 1920 presidential election won by Warren Harding — was transmitted over Pittsburgh’s AM station KDKA.

The most powerful AM signals can be heard over several states. They dominated broadcasting for more than 50 years, bringing listeners Bing Crosby’s crooning, Bob Hope’s comedy routines and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fireside chats in the 1930s and ‘40s.

During the Cold War era of the 1950s, AM frequencies were designated to provide civil defense information in the event of a nuclear attack. In the 1960s, top 40 stations such as KHJ-AM (930) — “Boss Radio” in Los Angeles — gave baby boomers the sound of the Beatles and Motown.

The FCC passed a rule in 1965 that limited how much AM programming could be duplicated on jointly owned FM stations, which provided better sound fidelity but not the same geographical reach. The rule opened up a proliferation of new music formats on the FM dial and by the 1980s, the band had more listeners than AM outlets.

As FM grew in popularity, AM stations continued to provide news and sports programming, but even those formats have shifted to FM in recent years. KNX, the longtime all-news radio station serving Southern California, now airs on FM and calls itself KNX News 97.1, even though it’s still heard on its old AM frequency of 1080 as well.

The AM band’s association with political talk radio is in large part due to the success of Rush Limbaugh, the bombastic commentator who became a phenomenon in the 1990s and set a template for many hosts who followed.

While conservative talk radio is what gets attention on AM, other constituencies would also be disenfranchised if the band goes away. Markey noted last week that many AM stations have Latino and Black ownership — such as KBLA-AM (1580) in Los Angeles — providing programming their communities can access for free.

“They shouldn’t just disappear during the electric vehicle revolution just because some companies say they can’t figure out how to do this,” Markey said at a Senate committee hearing last week. “Some companies say we know how to have a space rocket and go to the moon and we know how to invent electric vehicles, but we can’t figure out how to keep AM radios and those new cars. Come on.”

Amador Bustos is a Portland, Ore.-based station owner whose main business is Spanish language FM outlets. Along the way he acquired AM stations that serve ethnic communities, including KZSJ-AM (1120) in San Jose, which has one of the country’s largest concentration of Vietnamese immigrants, many of whom came to the U.S. as refugees.

“They are getting news and information in their language,” Bustos said.

Bustos also owns AM stations that offer Russian-language religious programming aimed at Christians who have left Russia because of persecution.

AM stations remain a vital part of the Emergency Alert System, which the federal government uses to provide information during a crisis or disaster.

Seventy-seven stations in the system, most of which are AM and cover 90% of the country, are equipped with backup communications equipment and generators that allow them to continue broadcasting during and after an emergency.

Federal agencies have praised the reliability of AM, which is able to reach rural areas where broadband internet service can be spotty or nonexistent.

Ford Motor Co. was among the automakers that planned to drop AM, not only in electric vehicles but in internal combustion engine models as well. But the maker of the best-selling truck in the U.S. reversed its decision after public safety officials raised concerns.

If the auto companies don’t fall in line, Hannity said he is ready to alert his audience.

“If they’re being obstinate about this, I’m just gonna name the names and let people know that they’re silencing conservative voices here,” Hannity said. “I don’t think they’ve put a lot of thought into it.”