YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve Boom

lines on the record: 113
first: 2022-11-01
most recent: 2022-11-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, the need for music hairs was amplified during the pandemic, but it's always been there. And I think for us, it's about growing music hairs. And it's well known in the music industry, but not even well enough known in the music industry. It's sort of the, I want to call it the best kept secret because it's not a secret, but there's still a lot of people don't know about it. I think for music cares, it's making sure this next generation of artists really knows about music hairs and expanding the types of services we provide. A lot of focus going forward on mental health because we're seeing that as a growing problem among artists, particularly around younger generation of artists, if I'm really honest. And so it's an area that we're expanding into.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Made the comment about how wonderful it was to be in person after two years. And you could tell the connection was stronger than ever between the artists and the fans. It was great.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It feels back. I haven't seen the data, but it certainly feels like it's back. I mean, every show I've been to has been sold out, every merch line is snaking around, impossible to get merch. One of the reasons Amazon's interested in the merch business. It's a pretty under-innovated space, let's just say. But it does feel back to me. I was at a show here last night in New York, and it was full. It was full and everyone was having a great time and dancing around. And the artist.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For everybody around the world, it was crisis mode. And the other leaders on my team stepped up and they knew I wasn't really, you know, I was on the calls with them. We were talking about COVID stuff. But on business stuff, I just kind of let them go take care of things because I had to focus on this.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Usually, it's fairly easy to balance. I have a time commitment with music cares and I scheduled into my day and I personally and Amazon as a whole view that as a really important part of the music industry and it's a great thing that I'm involved and as an organization we're also not just me personally but we donate a lot of money to music hairs as an organization and we got a lot of people involved in it. You know, I've got a great team. And so for those first few weeks, it was crisis mode.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The outputs were awesome. How does that work when you have two jobs like that? I mean, I'm sure I'm just going to go do music here. It's like we're going to make sure that venue owners and their employees are stable.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Been in the music industry as a kind of primary source of revenue for the last two years. And we were cutting checks to people within, I think, a few weeks of it being called a global pandemic. And I can't tell you the number of testimonials I've seen about like you saved me. I was going to get kicked out of my house or whatever it was. It's an incredibly meaningful organization. I've been chairman for about three years. I've been on the board for about five. And it's just an amazing organization and continues to grow and to give a context, that $30 million around COVID relief was probably about four or five times what we normally do in a typical year of money raised and distributed to people in the music industry. So it was very intense. I think for the first two weeks of the pandemic, I felt like I spent more time, definitely more time on music hairs than on Amazon business. It was like nonstop all day, every day, you know, trying to raise money and talk to people. And so same with Harvey Mason. And it was just awesome. The outputs.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we're all just in shell shock. So actually, I think within two or three days of it being declared a global pandemic, we sat down and we created what's called the Music Hares COVID-19 relief fund. And we then went out and raised money from the tech companies like Amazon, but almost all of the companies in the industry participated, some very, very generously, that everyone was there. And that was important that we all get in there together. Record labels, artists, very successful artists contributed. I don't have the exact figures, but let's call it roughly in the range of about $30 million raised and distributed as financial assistance. And we have a very good vetting process because we've been doing this for years to the point where other charities in the music business were coming to us and said, hey, could we funnel the contributions we're getting through you guys because you have a really good vetting process vetting to see, is this person really in the music industry? Have they been in it?”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so music cares is the foundation it's affiliated with the recording academy that people have put on the Grammys. And it's been around for 30 years and it's really the largest music charity in the business. Our goal is to help people in the music industry who need help. We kind of think of it as the people behind the music. Obviously, we're not talking about Beyonce doesn't need our help. She's doing just fine. But like you said, when COVID happened and the industry just stopped, there are a lot of people immediately out of work. So historically, music cares, we do things like financial assistance, medical assistance, hearing clinics at festivals. A lot of addiction recovery. Unfortunately, addiction continues to be a problem in almost any media business, but definitely in music. When COVID hit, we recognized the unprecedented nature of this. And I sat with the chairman of the academy, Harvey Mason Jr. is now the CEO of the Academy, and we're like, we got to do something. You know, it's going to be a while before the government kicks in.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have it in the front page the Amazon app. Let's go. We have actually, so we actually have raised price on a couple of our plans in this calendar year in 2022. Yes, Apple just raised prices, something we're always looking at what's the right price point for our customers. If and when we have something to announce, we'll make sure you hear about it.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If we do decide to raise the rates, I will announce that to all my customers at the same time as opposed to on a podcast. I don't know they're all listening right now. We can make that happen.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just selling vinyl and CDs. I like our ability to help them do that. What I like them to see more money off of streaming, absolutely. And I think over time you'll see it happen.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think you need to look way more deeply into artist cohorts and figure out there are plenty of artists who are making a ton of money on streaming, let's be honest about it. Those are the same artists who would have made a ton of money selling CDs and vinyl. There are more artists than there have ever been before by an order of magnitude or more. And a lot of those artists aren't having hit singles. And so if you just have one hit single, I think even in the old days, the one hit wonders, I don't know whether those artists were wealthy for life. I think maybe streaming amplifies sort of the most popular stuff is even more popular. But I think that's also just part of globalization of culture as a whole. The stuff that's big tends to get bigger. The stuff that's niche does struggle. And I think my guess is those artists historically, most of them needed to find other revenue sources beyond.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They made a lot of, but it was all music, right? You had a hit song and the hit song generated a lot of revenue for you a lot of ways. Now it's like you have a hit song and what you need to do is sell perfume.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you worry that actually just making hit songs isn't enough to be a business anymore? This is the thing I worry about the most, right? Like when I was a kid with vinyl and then CDs, you were just an artist. You could just sell a lot of vinyl. You could just sell a lot of CDs. You could get a lot of radio plays and you'd be rich.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would I We would consider it. I don't think it's ready for mainstream anywhere close to it at this point. So it's not something you should expect to see from us in the near term. But yeah, we're looking at NFTs. We're looking at all kinds of ways for artists to build new revenue lines by connecting with their fans. And again, we view our position as pretty strong there coming as Amazon, as a retailer, as someone customers trust to spend money. And when you talk to artists, that's actually what they're looking for from us. They've been asking us Since as long as I've been in the business, like, hey, could you help me with X, Y, or Z? And X, Y, or Z almost always involves, how do I become more than just an artist? How do I build other business lines? And you're the biggest online retailer in the world, can you help me? And that's now that we have this big base of a music service and we understand who are the fans of this artist and that artist, that gives us an incredible opportunity to expand those artist businesses over time.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't stay up at night worrying about NFTs. I don't think it's going to end the business. I think there's a lot to be seen. I think there's a potentially large opportunity. And for sure to allow artists to engage more directly with fans. I think when I talked earlier about how we see the future and artists and fans really connecting much more and there's a lot more revenue to get from fans that way, that's where I see an opportunity for NFTs.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think so. I've talked to so many artists and music people and tech people who tell me that NFTs in the blockchain is going to revolutionize this industry and we're going to stop streaming and we're going to pay for NFT tracks or whatever it is. And it's going to end your business. You spend your time thinking about NFCs?”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not as much as Amazon In music, they have a lot of scale, but Amazon has Amazon retails the iPhone. Like, there's a different kind of scale that is happening here. Is it that you need to be all encompassing in this way to compete?”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely not existential for us. No. Would I like it to be somewhat different? Yeah, probably. But at the end of the day, it's not existential for us. Audible has a really big audiobooks business that has thrived in a long-standing partnership with Apple, right? And so they're the biggest audiobooks player out there. And they've been working with Apple for 15 plus years, 20 plus years, and so they've managed to build a big business while working with Apple. So I can't really speak to Spotify's position and what they want or need. But Amazon has managed to build big businesses even when Audible wasn't as big as they are today. They managed to build a big business working with Apple.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Spotify has framed the stuff as an existential threat to their business, right? We can't expand our market if we have to pay a cut for everything we invent. Do you feel it as existential? Do you feel like it's in your way?”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the video off I really can't go into that. I just would say, obviously, the example you gave of wallpapers is an easier one because it's a digital good. There's no cost of goods sold. It depends if I have to pay 70% back to the labels and publishers or whatever, that gets problematic. But if it's something totally new.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm imagining something Rapple would take a tax. We want to sell an ebook from Taylor Swift next to her page in the store. That's a new revenue line for us. Apple wants a cut of that. Is that okay? I'm gonna try to make that deal, or is it? I'm gonna call Andy and he's gonna say, I'm yanking video off the Apple TV unless you make this deal.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you perceive the additional leverage of the higher level business conversation when you're making your decisions? Do you say, okay, look, we really need to roll out, I don't know, whatever it would be, more digital merch in the store. We really want to sell more things from artists on Amazon music. Some of those things are wallpapers. They're digital items.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was my decision and other business owners can make their own decisions, but obviously then there's a higher level relationship discussion that happens from time to time. I'd say there are complicated relationships. Whole positive but complicated.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they're different relationships. So we have a different relationship with each of them. And I think Amazon and Apple, Amazon and Google, we have much more wide-ranging relationship than perhaps some other companies, just given our scale, right? So we sell devices, we retail devices on Amazon. Apple Music's a partner on Echo, Google. We work really closely with across the board. So the way Amazon tends to work is we generally allow each of the individual businesses to make a decision about whether they want to, it was my decision to put Amazon Music Unlimited in Apple in the App Store where I would agree to pay a share. But it's not, by the way, you know, the way it works with subscriptions is different than with transactions. It's cheaper. Correct.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not 100% the case, but yeah, by and large, you can subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited and you can subscribe to Audible through Apple.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It strikes me that the music industry, as we've had this conversation, the music industry is just full of gatekeepers left and right in a way that the tech industry kind of isn't. But there's two gigantic gatekeepers at the intersection of music and tech, right? There's Apple and there's Google. Spotify is in this endless vitriolic fight with Apple. They just published a bunch of stuff yesterday about Apple won't let them sell audiobooks in the right way. Amazon is the poster child for you can't buy a book or a digital item on an iOS device without jumping through some series of complicated hoops.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the things that strikes me about all this is theoretically what Amazon brings to the table is massive distribution and then the entire Amazon suite of things. You're a trusted company, hold a lot of credit cards, you can drive purchases for all this other stuff.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Didn't acquire smart lists. Those guys are building an incredible media company on their own, and we're helping them monetize it and make it more valuable, but they're staying independent”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It seems like it's slowed down already to me. I mean, we've bought Wondery 18 months ago. We haven't bought anybody else when we did the deal with Smartless. It was misrepresented in the press as us having acquired Smartless, which was not the case at all. It's a partnership where we exclusively represent their ads and some other smaller things like early access on episodes for a week. But at the end of the day.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think absolutely independent podcast tutors can survive. I think no one has to be acquired. I think between wandering nuts, we saw a unique synergy between the two of us, but there are lots of independent podcasters that I just described that are working with us, but as partners, not through acquisition, that we can actually help them monetize better than they were monetizing on their own and actually help them to stay independent. I don't think you're going to see in podcasting a huge continued consolidation of all these studios. Do you think that?”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The same thing that happened to sort of music streaming is happening in podcasts, right? You very hard to find an independent music streaming company. They're all tied to some bigger thing. There's a massive wave of consolidation and acquisition amongst podcast studios, Spotify bought Gimlet, the New York Times bought serial, Odyssey bought Cadence 13, our company Vox bought Criminal and Cafe, Amazon bought Wondery. Is that just the nature of the industry that you need to be part of a bundle or you need a larger suite of brands or you need to be tied to distribution some way? Do you think an independent podcast studio can survive?”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of It's a little of both, right? So Wandery operates independently, but it reports to me and Jen Sargent, who's the CEO, is part of my leadership team. And they work closely on some of the podcast things that are happening inside of Amazon music. But at the same time, they're running as an independent company.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If that's the motivation, no, the answer is no. I think with Wondery, we saw an opportunity. One difference that we like is that we can own IP, which we don't in music. We're not the IP owner. The labels and the publishers are. So that's great. But we actually looked at it more, and you can see from our strategy that we continue to distribute all the wondery podcasts broadly, including on Spotify, on Apple, et cetera, we saw an opportunity to build a big advertising business. And we thought then and we continue to think they're absolutely the best in the business, both from a content production perspective, but also from an ads perspective. And you can see the deals that we've done since Wandery became part of Amazon doing partnerships with SmartLists, my favorite murder, Morbid, et cetera, to build out really, they're now the number two publisher from an ad network perspective in the United States, up from number three. And, you know, goal is to become number one over time. We see an opportunity to build a big ads business. And that ads business is going to that scale, not by having everything exclusive on Amazon, but actually having things.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you have an Excel department? Is that you? Like, who makes that decision? Yeah, we don't have an Excel department per se, but Amazon does have a team of economists. Who look at prime and the subscription revenue that Prime members pay, either annual or monthly, and allocate that revenue out to the various benefits that come with prime? Obviously, the top two benefits are your free shipping and prime video are easily the top two. And then music is the third, but it's quite a distant third in terms of the revenue allocated.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can Is definitely changing. So you have just you've done the math and saying, okay, we can take out the, for this segment of listens, we can take the ads out and allocate some dollars from the prime bundle. That's right.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I can speak from our wonder experience. We're still the higher CPMs are still right now and selling by show versus selling by audience. But it is changing. I agree with you there. It is definitely changing.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can you at least for some portion of the podcast, can you make it ad free? You know, there are different types of podcasts. I think in some cases ads are more disruptive than others. When you're hearing a narrative story and then an ad comes in right in the middle of the story, it's quite disruptive. I think if it's a more talk radio style, you know, type of podcast, I think ads are honestly not as disruptive. So I think you can take a little more nuanced approach to where does it do.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, to be clear, in the case of Wonder, we're still distributing all of Wonderry's podcasts Across other podcast listening apps. And those are ad supported. There's also a subscription option called Wondery Plus that you can subscribe directly or through Apple. And that's, I think, core to Apple is the biggest podcast subscription in the marketplace. For us, it was, you know, prime members can get podcasts anywhere they want. They can get them on Amazon. They can get them in a multitude of places. We see growth in the podcasting market really happening in terms of number of listeners coming on board. It's moved away from being a niche thing, kind of geeky thing a few years ago to being really right in the middle of the mainstream. But there's still a lot of growth left. And as simple as when we looked at and talked to customers about what is it that you want, that was the number one thing.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was just going to the labels and explaining this is our vision for the product going forward. We want you guys to support it and we talk through why we're doing it and explain. We give them data and we reaffirm our commitment that ultimately want people in the premium service, that we look at prime music as ultimately it's the best service you can get without having to spend an extra $10 a month out in the marketplace. But ultimately it has limited functionality compared to a full on-demand service. And we want people to upgrade at the end of the day.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wasn't so much about Alexa. That's really just about prime is this massive membership base around the world. And it's been a great revenue and growth engine for Amazon Music and our partners. And when we launched it in 2014, streaming was new. People's expectations were different now. Streaming is no longer new and people's expectations are they should get access to everything. We live in that kind of a world where I have access to everything whenever I want it.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you go and say, okay, we're going to expand the service that's included with the prime to be the full catalog, to be ad free, to have shuffle. Is that based on the same thing? Hey, we've got Alexa that's going to happen for you making that better. Is better? Is it how does that work?”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't want to listen to it on my phone. Maybe I pay for a separate service on my phone because music has historically been more internally we say it's more of an or business versus an AND business, like video, meaning video you'll subscribe to prime and Netflix and HBO. And in music, you tend because the proposition is all the world's music, it tends to be more of an or. I subscribe to Amazon or Apple or Spotify or et cetera. We have enough data to support our belief that there's a certain number of customers who are subscribing to the single device plan who may be subscribing to a competitive service on their phone, but we've spent so much energy on building a great voice interface for music that they prefer our service on an echo device and they're willing to pay. So now that's extra revenue for the industry.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you look back at the peak of the CD market, 50% of U.S. consumers were spending money on music, the other 50% were listening but not buying anything. The average spend of those who bought music was 50 bucks a year. So when we came to the labels with this idea of this perfectly designed mid-tier service at 60 bucks a year, there's actually more revenue than they were making off the average CD buyer back in the day. So it's been hugely successful. A lot of people come in on an echo. They buy that plan, then a lot of them will upgrade either to the individual plan or the family plan. So in that case, it acts as a nice low cost on-ramp into streaming. And then for those, there are other people who like, no, that's all I want. I just want on this device. I've got my smart speaker.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Labels was if that customer never tries to use it on their phone, never gets presented with an upgrade message, this is found money for you. This is a new customer in the ecosystem. And by the way, it's priced at a level.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because you might ask for the latest song by Drake, and that wasn't in our catalog for whatever reason. And she would say, it's not available, et cetera. So we went to the label and said, we need a full catalog. But we think the Echo device is going to expand the market. You can look at all the data of who's buying them, and we think it's going to expand the market. And therefore, what we want to do is we want a full catalog service that works only on this device. So it's tied to the device, almost like an EPG would be tied to your television. But we don't have to launch it at a reduced price. And that's a $4.99 service. So it's the first mid-tier service where it's a fully functioning product. There's nothing for the customer to try to figure out. I can only ask six times, none of that. You can do whatever you want, but it's only five bucks a month. The moment you try to use it on your phone or on your television or wherever else, you're going to be prompted, oh, well, that requires an upgrade to the full plan. So we call this the single device plan. It's been immensely successful. And one of the pitches to...”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But here's the weather in Los Angeles. Not a great customer experience. And that's what actually Prime Music, the experience was.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They all failed. We actually went with the idea, like, we have a great idea. This device is begging for a full catalog of music, right? I used to joke when we launched the Echo device, we had prime music only at the time, which by design was a limited catalog. It had two million songs back in the day. But there's no screen on an echo. So if you have a phone or any kind of visual interface, we can really guide you to the music and we get to decide how you browse for music, how you search for music, because we're controlling the structure of the interface with a no screen on an echo device. We don't control anything. The customer just walks up and says what he or she feels like saying. And what we found obviously is that people wanted the full catalog. And so the way I explained it to Jeff, I was like, imagine if you went to Alex and said, hey, Alexa, what's the weather in San Francisco? And Alexa's response was, I'm sorry, but San Francisco weather is not included in your prime membership.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For everything No, like in 2016, I mentioned that's when our relationships really changed. We went to the labels with an idea. It wasn't just that we want to launch Amazon Music Unlimited, which I won't name all the people that tried to do it, but each and every one of them failed. And they failed because they got over licensed. That's the right word. They over-regulated in their licenses as to what they could do because the fear was always if you make it good enough, people will say, that's good enough. I'll pay five bucks a month instead of $10. So you'd end up not growing the market but actually shrinking the market. So it was like, oh, you could only have three downloads a month or these types of restrictions, which aren't very consumer friendly impossible to explain to people.”
2022-11-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT