Amazon Music Now Allows Artists to Integrate Twitch Streams

Amazon has taken their focus on music in regards to the Twitch streaming platform to the next level, as Amazon Music will now allow artists to livestream directly within its the platform through a partnership with Twitch, according to Billboard.

Amazon has been hard at work at developing the music section of Twitch, and putting more emphasis on music streams during the pandemic. With impressive hires over the past year to a marked increase in visibility on the streaming platform, Amazon’s efforts haven’t gone unnoticed.

Officially rolling out today across all Amazon Music streaming tiers (including their free tier) as well as Amazon Prime, Amazon Music Unlimited, and Amazon Music HD, Amazon Music becomes the first music streaming service to add live music streams capabilities for all of their artists, while also allowing Twitch new access to Amazon Music’s 55 million users around the globe.

“We’ve been trying to figure out what the evolution of a music service is going to be, and a way to drive stronger artist-to-fan connections was an important part of that,” Amazon Music directory Ryan Redington said in an interview with Billboard.

“Livestreaming was an obvious next step for us. If you couple that with on-demand streaming, the fact that a fan can go directly from engaging with an artist via livestream and move into on-demand consumption is really powerful.”

If you want to get involved in the new feature, you’ll need to be an artist on Amazon Music and have a Twitch channel set up as well. From there, simply link your Twitch and Amazon Music accounts via the new Amazon Music for Artists app.

Artists such as Imagine Dragons, Donald Glover, Bastille, Black Pumas, and mxmtoon have already connected their accounts and are ready for future live streaming.

Artists are open to stream musical performances as well as tutorials, host Q&As, and more.

With the arrival of the new feature, Amazon is ramping up the marketing as well. The Amazon Music homepage will now feature a carousel promoting artist livestreams,  a new “Live” tab will that list all the performances happening in real-time, and users of Amazon Music will receive push notifications when an artist they follow goes live.

Amazon Music will also be launching it’s own branded channel that will come packed with scheduled content. Some of that content includes a Q&A session with The Killers’ Brandon Flowers and Ronnie Vannucci Jr regarding their latest album, as well as a variety series from Nicole Atkins that include specials guest such as Elle King and Whitney, which will broadcast every Wednesday.

“This partnership brings the connection that’s been happening on Twitch between artists and fans to a much wider audience, and creates opportunity for everyone to discover how awesome is it is when you can actually interact with your favorite musician,” Twitch vp and head of music Tracy Chan said, per the article. “We think this is a step change in how the music industry should be working.”

Earlier this summer, widespread hits of copyright strikes impacted a number of streamers and content creators on the platform, but Twitch has been under criticism from the Artist Rights Alliance, the RIAA and the National Music Publishers’ Association, who argue that Twitch should add more robust music licenses given their connection to Amazon.

“Twitch is a creator-first company at its core,” Chan said about the criticism. “We value the work of songwriters and musicians and producers primarily, and we give guidance to our music creators to respect that intellectual property. We have our DMCA program. We also have taken the additional steps of working with the performing rights organizations on behalf of our creators, just because it’s an extra easy step that our creators don’t have to worry about, and it enables songwriters and publishers to get paid.”