From The Verge: Amazon is launching its long-rumored Clubhouse competitor today: a new app called Amp that’s more about listening to music than sitting around and chatting.
Anyone who signs up will be able to host their own live show, complete with the ability to stream “tens of millions of licensed songs” from the big three record labels and “a long list” of indies, Amazon says. The goal is to turn any user into a radio DJ, able to program a playlist, talk to listeners, and chat with call-in guests.
Critically, hosts and listeners won’t need to subscribe to any particular service to tune in — anyone can listen in to full-length songs as long as they sign up for Amp, which is free.
Amazon is positioning this as more of a radio-style service than a live chat service (there’s even a five-person cap on callers right now), which is probably for the best. Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces already have a big presence in the live audio space, and Facebook is taking a crack at it, too. But none of them have the music licensing agreements in place that Amazon does, and so those services have focused far more on conversations between hosts and guests. Amazon has a chance to let hosts do something very different here, giving everyone a shot at being something like a college radio DJ.
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