“Hello, beautiful human,” said Zach Sang. “This is night two from my house.” On that second night on Amazon’s Amp, launched March 8, Sang noted that he was not only waiting for his permanent studio to be finished, he was waiting for his temporary studio to be finished. He did have co-hosts Daniel and Jordan with him. He did not yet have the ability to talk over music.
When Amp was announced on March 8, it immediately struck me as Amazon’s answer to Spotify’s Music + Talk, which lets users intersperse podcasts with songs from the ISP’s music library. When radio trades or radio people wrote about Amp this week, often before they were able to use the service themselves, they were more likely to emphasize the “new radio rival” aspects, particularly because Amp’s own press release described it as radio “if you were inventing the medium for the first time today.”
In my first 18 hours with the beta version, Amp came off a lot more like social audio amp Clubhouse, but with the ability to deejay your own sessions, and without some of Clubhouse’s other functionality. There was no search bar. There were no archived shows, only a handful of currently playing or scheduled shows with one-sentence descriptors. (There is a longer description of upcoming shows on Amp’s website.) There are established broadcasters like Kat Corbett, but she wasn’t doing a show today. (Corbett was, however, one of many creators who posted a sign-up code on Twitter, allowing me to get on first day, instead of being on Amazon’s wait list.)
It has been a year since Clubhouse truly looked like the next big, devastating thing for radio, and a major new vehicle for radio people. I can now disclose that during the few weeks of Clubhouse’s greatest industry heat, reader engagement with Ross on Radio actually went down for a few weeks, then quickly rebounded. But there are still a handful of broadcasters, particularly syndicated host Rick Party and consultant Loyd Ford who remain advocates and have found a home there.
In its first days, Amp was, surprisingly, not a vehicle for promoting Amazon Music, which has made inroads as a result of smart speakers. Users looking to launch a session have access to a music library but not, say, to Amazon Music playlists. You can create a show, which currently goes away when you’re finished doing it. What users can’t create yet is a radio station.
I’ve spent the last eight years telling broadcasters not to get too hung up on “what is radio?” If you can’t listen to both media at the same time, any new platform is a competitor. But what I want from radio is that produced, shared experience programmed with aforethought. People who don’t write radio newsletters might be less hung up on this, but I want radio stations. Like Apple Music, Amp’s units of currency are shows and content creators, but without the organizing principle of Apple’s three main stations.
Just before Sang’s session at 6 p.m., there was an “Amp Support” session with two staffers giving users the mic for questions. By that time, it was obviously clear to the Amp people that users wanted to search shows and creators, as well as the ability to save shows and to share them to social networks. Those were “high on the priority list.” One user said that they had played a three-song set without speaking and been kicked off for inactivity. They were asked to report it.
It’s important to note that the users I heard sounded enthusiastic. A few came from Clubhouse. One self-identified as an audio influencer. “I love radio and this is so easy. I can sit on the beach and do a show,” said the first user. Like a Clubhouse session, there were a few participants who ended up “on the air” more than once, or who had been on a similar morning session. This session didn’t sound like radio. The host immediately launched into Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy,” but kept cutting into it to take calls.
Sang’s history on both broadcast radio and other platforms made him a logical early hire for Amp. When his show kicked off, Amp started to sound more radio-like. There was a contest: Win free gas by guessing how high prices were in various states. When Gayle’s “abcdefu” played, Sang mentioned that she’d be on the following night. There were callers, including one decade-long fan of Sang who used to listen to him on KCHZ (95.7 The Vibe) Kansas City. Sang came to us billed as a next-gen talent, but he’s now been doing this long enough to inspire at least a few next-next-gen talents.
Other topics in the first hour included the Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa copyright litigation, the long road to No. 1 for Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves,” and whether couples should work together (which prompted one team member to announce that he had never had a relationship). The best moments of the 90 minutes or so that I heard were the personal ones. At that moment, what the show sounded like was — in a good way — when a morning team broadcasts from a convention hallway: still formatted but a little less regimented somehow.
One of Sang’s other topics was why Sam Fender is “like Springsteen for our age.” One of the things that I’ve most hoped for from alternate radio platforms is that one of them would offer a hipper Top 40 format that includes those acts not typically played on American CHR. Sang played Sam Fender and the new George Ezra. (In that regard, it reminded me of what I liked about an early Sang employer, Goomradio.) I would definitely listen to a Top 40 format similar to what I heard Sang play, but for now the format goes away when the show ends.
Here was Sang’s music during the first 50 minutes or so of his March 9 show:
- The Kid Laroi & Justin Bieber, “Stay”
- Charlie Puth, “Light Switch”
- Gayle, “abcdefu” (the “forget you” version)
- Glass Animals, “Heatwaves”
- Lizzo, “Truth Hurts”
- Sam Fender, “Seventeen Going Under”
- Ed Sheeran, “Shape of You”
- Olivia Rodrigo & Joshua Bassett, “Breaking Free”
At last month’s Country Radio Seminar, almost every panel I attended somehow gravitated back to the decade-old saw about radio being “the original social network.” Those claims always sounded a little desperate, but it’s gratifying to be reminded occasionally that social networks and other competitors sometimes want to be radio as well. All along, the race has been between broadcasters’ ability to create experiences on other platforms and their rivals’ ability to match radio’s lean-back functionality and stationality.
For that reason, I’ve also spent the last eight years telling broadcasters not to ignore their digital rivals. None of this reportage of a new service’s inchoate first days is meant to in any way dismiss a potential challenger on radio’s behalf. Amazon is still Amazon, and the presence of Sang indicates an intent to “do radio” that will likely become clearer in the weeks and months to come. Radio has its own lack of new toys and its own UX issues (like the stopset) and some of those are 15 years old.
