Amazon Music strikes a new chord with podcasts, Prime and Alexa to stand apart

Amid a sea of soundalike tracks, Amazon Music is striking a new chord to soar above the noise. It is following a three-pronged approach to stay more relevant than the others. It is offering a completely ad-free experience that doesn’t charge customers separately and is part of the Amazon Prime bundle along with video and shopping, a top company official said.

It is also producing a range of exclusive podcasts and video content with artistes in addition to songs. And finally, it aims to benefit from the Amazon consumer tech ecosystem, including Fire TVs and Alexa devices that can help improve the listening experience.

“For us, the differentiation (from other players) comes from the fact that we are an ad-free, on-demand product. We’re not charging customers separately because it’s all within the Prime bundle,” Rishabh Gupta, country head, Amazon Music India, said in an interview. “On the content side, we do a lot of exclusive podcasts and bring fans closer to artistes via video IPs (intellectual properties).”

As far as local languages go, the platform hosts content in 20-plus languages, with Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu and Punjabi forming the top five, Gupta added. On the Android app, the user interface supports nine languages.

The platform that has seen engagement surge since the pandemic. Gupta said that podcast customer listening hours are up 22% over 2024. While Hindi remains its most streamed language with an 84% customer spread, followed by English and Punjabi at 63%, Tamil and Telugu are witnessing strong growth, too, driven by curated regional playlists and improved discovery features.

Gupta said the service is fully committed to being seen as a part of the Prime bundle and has witnessed great traction among consumers, in turn, helping the Prime program (including video and shopping) significantly. “People who use multiple benefits have been some of our longest-serving Prime customers,” Gupta added.

As a DSP (distribution service provider), Gupta said the platform doesn’t necessarily dictate as to what content needs to be produced. However, besides the music catalogue that comes via acquisitions from both from the film and non-film genres, Amazon Music is creating some of its own video and editorial IPs. This shoulder content, ranging from 2 to 20-minute videos, touches upon themes like what may be going on in an artiste’s mind before going on stage at a concert, and so on. Further, while the platform is open to all kinds of podcasts, it targets some exclusive and early access deals as well. Podcast content now makes up approximately 15% of total user engagement on the platform.

To be sure, the audio business in India, across regions and languages, is facing its share of challenges. Film producers, independent artistes and music labels are grappling with the shutdown of multiple streaming platforms, including Airtel’s Wynk, ByteDance’s Resso and Hungama Music, which failed to crack the paid subscription model. Others, such as Spotify, have halved per-stream payouts. Despite a rich musical heritage and wide consumption across the country, the Indian music segment declined by 2% to ₹5,300 crore in 2024, according to the annual Ficci EY media and entertainment report.

Digital revenue, the biggest chunk of the segment, fell from 68% of total revenue in 2023 to 62.4% last year. The Indian music industry recorded 192 million free streamers in 2024, as compared to 12 million paid streamers, reaffirming that platforms have been forced to depend heavily on advertising revenue.

However, Gupta is optimistic.

“India is an evolving country and a growing market for all kinds of businesses, including music, which is currently at the centre stage of the art and culture landscape. The space is constantly evolving with developments in technology and marketing, not to mention a continuous endeavour to grow bigger and better,” Gupta said. “As a country, we’ve advanced exponentially—just see how easy it is to make digital payments today and compare it to how it was three to four years back when we were all cash dependent. And while this has nothing to do with the music industry, it has aided the subscription economy, not just for the music industry, but for video-on-demand and everything else. So, every few years we see a new addition, mostly a better one, to the existing norms and processes that suddenly drive some sort of hockey stick growth for the industry, and I think for music, it’s probably just around the corner,” he added.