Amazon Music Artists Can Now Add ‘Spotlight’ Voice Messages to Listeners
Amazon Music has launched a way for artists to send messages to fans with its new Spotlight feature. Musical acts can add and update their personal voice message for specific musical selections that fans can hear as part of a playlist or by asking Alexa.
Music Spotlight
Spotlight is similar in many ways to the feature included in the Spotify For Artists package. The difference is that Spotify only offers the option to a limited number of top artists, while any artist with at least 3,000 fans on Amazon Music can make a free Spotlight. Amazon said it wants to lower that requirement soon too. In that way, it’s more like the Pandora AMP (Artist Marketing Platform) toolset. Amazon Music listeners can see the Spotlight at the top of the artist’s profile page and on their activity feed. If they are listening through Alexa, they can ask the voice assistant to “play the Spotlight from Lil Simz” or whichever artist they want. On the performer side, the Spotlight can be connected to any song, album, station, or playlist through the Amazon Music for Artists app if they meet the minimum fan threshold. They can share stories, promote shows, or talk about anything else they choose, updating it as and when they decide.
“Spotlight is a new and easy way to connect with fans through Amazon Music and Alexa by sharing music along with a personal voice message,” Amazon explained in announcing the feature. “It’s your pick. What will you Spotlight?”
Musical Assistance
The Spotlight feature is just the latest of Amazon Music’s experiments with new ways to connect fans and performers, building on several other efforts over the last couple of years. In October, Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers gained spatial audio as a streaming option for music. Spatial audio recreates the way people hear sound in three dimensions. Amazon Music has thousands of songs mixed to mimic hearing performance in the room, with relative volume and other elements adjusted to suggest direction and distance. A few months before that, Amazon Music introduced DJ Mode to artists. DJ Mode augments select streaming stations with additional content, curated playlists, and unique commentary tracks to change the experience for each listen.
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