Amazon Music now allows artists to connect their Twitch channels to the platform. When they do, their fans on Amazon Music will see when they go live on Twitch and can watch the livestream directly from Amazon Music — without even needing a Twitch account.
Why is this cool?
You probably noticed we tend to talk about your options for livestreaming as a musician quite a bit. That's because we genuinely believe livestreaming presents one of the better opportunities when it comes to both growing your fan base and making money.
Obviously livestreaming's growth among musicians saw a huge bump out of necessity when the entire live music ecosystem screeched to a halt in March 2020. But even before that, music's presence on platforms like Twitch was growing at a steady pace.
Twitch made music a focus over the past few months by hiring more people to the music team, highlighting music streamers on the front page of Twitch, and adding a "music" tab at the top of the site. (Of course the whole issue with addressing how Twitch licenses — or doesn't license — music is a different can of worms).
This new integration with Amazon Music just shows the platform is committed to making a serious push in the music livestreaming space.
How You Connect Amazon Music To Twitch
Alright, for starters, if you don't have an Amazon Music for Artists account, you need to create one. This is true regardless of whether you livestream or not.
Amazon Music for Artists is the Amazon equivalent of Spotify for Artists and Apple Music for Artists. It's where you check your real-time stats on how your music is performing on Amazon Music. And though it's still in beta and has a ways to go in terms of functionality, you need to create a free account and start looking around.
Once you've created that account, signed in, and claimed yourself as an artist, you'll see the option to connect your Twitch account under "Profile & Tools." It's a simple integration from there.
What It Means
The big thing with the new integration is that people don't even have to know what Twitch is to see your performance. While Twitch is obviously massively popular in certain circles, a lot of people still don't even really know what livestreaming is, much less Twitch.
Because Amazon owns Twitch, the marriage between your Twitch profile and your Amazon Music profile makes plenty of sense. And while it's important to bring your existing fans into Twitch, the truth is most of the growth on the platform comes from people who are already using Twitch.
Now, when you go live on Twitch the stream will also show up in your Amazon Music profile. Which means if somebody is following you on Amazon Music, they'll get an opportunity to watch you perform without even needing to know what Twitch is.
Pretty cool.
This obviously leads to increased opportunities for new subscribers and more content consumption.
How The Amazon Music Integration Might Affect The Future
As we alluded to above, there are still PLENTY of questions around livestreaming and music. A lot of them come down to how these platforms pay content owners.
It's taken over a decade to find a somewhat workable solution with how YouTube pays artists when their content gets used in videos. And even then not a lot of people are really happy about it. It's kind of a "better than what we had before" situation.
However, the fact that Amazon Music and Twitch are both owned by the same company could lead to a few interesting possibilities. For one, they could simply bake Amazon Music into Twitch and account for consumption with a mixture of verified Twitch viewer stats and "stream" counts. Amazon is already exploring the option for "Watch Parties" across the Internet using Amazon Prime video.
The exciting part comes with the potential for Twitch streamers to directly affiliate their content on stream with Amazon Music. Though Amazon Music has fewer users than Spotify or Apple Music, the platform has been consistently growing (and tends to pay more per stream, thanks to its user base and economics).
This means users could potentially direct their fans to their recorded music right there on stream and get paid for it. One of the biggest knocks on Twitch is that, while it provides a ton of opportunity for growth in the platform, it hasn't yet really proven to be a catalyst for streaming growth outside of it.
It's still way too early to tell just how deeply Amazon chooses to intertwine its services. But right now, the developments are certainly helping tip the scales in favor of independent artists who choose to leverage technology to affordably grow a fan base.