Amazon has shut down its Clubhouse competitor’s stay radio app Amp nearly 18 months after its launch. The app allowed customers to play DJ and supply commentary alongside enjoying tracks.
The corporate’s lead for digital music, Steve Growth, despatched a memo internally saying the choice to close down the platform “solely turned clear after months of cautious consideration figuring out the investments Amazon needs to make for the longer term,” as reported by Bloomberg.
The app, launched in March 2022, did not register any important progress and had almost 700,000 month-to-month energetic customers in July, sources instructed TechCrunch. Amazon responded by saying that these metrics have been “inaccurate.” Analytics firm knowledge.ai famous that Amp had 1.3 million lifetime downloads.
The corporate lower nearly half of Amp’s employees final 12 months throughout mass layoffs on the firm. The app additionally did not tempt customers to enroll in Amazon as that quantity was in simply single-digit 1000’s, as per paperwork seen by Techcrunch in July.
Amazon tried to journey the stay audio hype fueled by the pandemic. On the launch, Amp introduced exhibits from big-name artists akin to Nicki Minaj, Pusha T, singer-songwriter Tinashe, digital artist and violinist Lindsey Stirling, Travis Barker, Lil Yachty, and Large Boi; well-known personalities Tefi Pessoa and Nikita Dragun; common radio hosts Zach Sang, Kat Corbett, Christian James Hand, and Man Raz.
The corporate even launched a creator fund in September 2022 by allocating “thousands and thousands of {dollars}” to pay present makers by means of month-to-month rewards.
However post-pandemic, the stay audio apps haven’t been capable of preserve person curiosity. Each Meta and Spotify gave up on real-time audio efforts final 12 months and determined to shift its assets elsewhere. Reddit shut down its stay audio product Reddit Speak in March.
Even Clubhouse, the a16z again startup that pioneered real-time conversations, is attempting to ramp up engagement by introducing chatrooms with asynchronous voice messages.
We’d see some experiences from Amp in Amazon Music, as Bloomberg talked about that the corporate will try to take learnings of the live-music group interplay to construct fan experiences.