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Amazon Music’s new app tells artists how fans request their songs via Alexa

Amazon Music’s new app tells artists how fans request their songs via Alexa

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Amazon Music for Artists

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Image: Amazon

Today, Amazon Music is launching an analytics platform for musicians called Amazon Music for Artists, as reported by Variety. Other music streaming services, such as Spotify and Apple Music, have had similar tools for a while in order to give artists insights and stats about fans and their listening habits. But there’s one big addition here: voice data, which is increasingly important in our day-to-day lives and a driving factor for music discovery.

Amazon Music for Artists is available as both an app for iOS and Android and a companion website at artists.amazonmusic.com. The app gives both top level and granular insights. For example, you can see a song’s total listening stats or look at its performance over the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, the website gives more nuanced information about how to use the app, interpret data, suggestions for better discovery by fans, and more.

Image: Amazon

The resources on the app are similar to what’s offered on other platforms. Artists can see where fans are based with location insights, real-time streaming data, see which fans engage with them the most, and keep track of the Amazon Music playlists and stations on which their music appears. The available data goes back to 2018 and refreshes on the app every couple of hours.

There is one important difference: Amazon’s app gives insights on how an artist is trending on Alexa. Not only does the app display an artist’s total number of voice requests, it shows details about the various ways people request songs, such as by artist, album, song, or lyrics.

Voice command data introduces new ways for artists to be savvy about promoting to their audience. Last year at Nashville’s Music Biz conference, Amazon Music’s director said during a panel that “Alexa, play...” is the second most popular command for the device behind “Alexa, set a timer.” There are also additional ways artists can use Alexa to their advantage, as pointed out by the Amazon Music for Artists website. Fans can set a song to play as their morning alarm or ask Alexa to follow an artist on Amazon Music to get notified about new music as soon as it’s released.

The app is available to download now for iOS and Android, but joining isn’t instant. CD Baby has partnered with Amazon Music for the app’s launch, so artists who are distributed through CD Baby will be fast tracked if they apply. Amazon Music says more distributors will be added “soon.”