My Two-Month Experience using Amazon's AMP

 

The Amp app has been deprecated.

My short, but valuable journey with AMP as "DJ Kazerific" has come to an end on 31-OCT-2023 and this post is my final farewell. I diligently hosted a total of nine shows once a week for my AMP shows, "Kazerific," which focused on my personal music inspirations and the "All Rounders at SM Entertainment" show, which focused on highlighting the music of SM artists. I had an incredible journey on this app, which forced me into a commitment whether or not I had listeners or up to six listeners, which is my personal high amount on a show (not including myself because that is my husband's favorite question). I wanted to write about my experience even though the shows looked easy to create every week, but it was not easy.

https://www.onamp.com/ no longer exists and is seemingly wiped off the internet. AMP is owned by Amazon.com, Inc. and was launched in March 2022 to allow creators to host their own talk or music show. Listeners can also listen to the curated music on the app and the app itself is free. I had downloaded this app on my iPhone at some point, but I have never thought to use it until last August 2023. It was something that I really wanted to do, but I never had the time to commit myself into exploring the app. I also wasn't sure if I would have the confidence to host a live radio show as I once did in college.

AMP itself is a dream come true. It is a free application in which users can play songs on the Amazon catalogue for free. It is open 24 hours a day with no limits on when show hosts or DJs can perform a live broadcast. I have seen over 20 shows live at once during a busy period of time. AMP also has an AMP Creator Fund, which supposedly pays certain AMP hosts on a monthly basis. The downsides to AMP is that there must be at least one listener in order to play beyond three songs. Promoting their respective shows are up to the creators themselves. The app is not global and is not available outside the U.S.A., as their website claims, but I was able to listen to the app in South Korea. Eventually, the app allowed android users to experience AMP as well and was not limited to iPhone users. Each show is saved on the AMP app for a total of two weeks and then the show disappears. The user can fast forward a recorded show or rewind a total of five times per hour. If anybody can start a show, that also meant that newbies who did not know how to use AMP will start a show and not knowing what they are doing, leave a lot of dead air on their show, background noises, and basically host a show that is not fit to be on air. Just like a real radio show, there are limitations to what a host can play where the host cannot play more than five songs from the same artist or four songs from the same album within three hours of a show. No marathons are allowed, but I can see maybe because there would be licensing issues, though it is not really clear since AMP does not follow the FCC regulations.

I will summarize the pros and cons:

PROS

1) Free application

2) Millions of songs on the catalogue

3) Open 24 hours a day

4) AMP Creator Fund

5) Available for iPhone on the app store, and eventually was available for the Android app store and phones

6) Shows with at least one listener are saved on the hosts' profile for two weeks

7) Anyone with the app can create a show on AMP

CONS

1) Not enough K-pop, C-pop, Canto-pop, and J-pop music available on AMP despite millions of songs on the catalogue

2) Available mainly in the USA as per AMP (though I was able to connect in South Korea)

3) Not certain who is exactly getting paid on the AMP Creator Fund and how the hosts are selected and how much money they would earn (seems like a scam to inspire new creators or unlikely non-celebrities would see a payout. Amp does not promote non-celebrities on a regular basis.)

4) At least one listener is needed to continue playing a fourth song

5) Creators must spend time on self-promotion on their own time

6) Shows with at least one listener are saved on the host's profile for two weeks and not longer

7) No ability to use this platform as a podcast

8) Can only rewind or fast forward for any recorded shows up to five times an hour

9) New hosts can possibly create a substandard show on AMP that is not up to professional standards

10) Limitations on playing songs from a particular artist to five songs and four songs from the same album in a period of three hours (but can get around this limitation by starting a new show)

11) No website support for AMP. AMP only plays certain (celebrity) shows on their website and not other live shows on their website. Cannot host a show or take any actions off of the AMP website.

While AMP has a variety of celebrity hosts on their app, the buzz generated by these celebrities are not significant in my opinion by my experience in the last two months. Listeners who have been on the AMP for a year or more may argue that back in the days of AMP's heyday, there used to be thousands of listeners on AMP, especially during the COVID time period, in which self-isolation was especially significant. When I joined some of these shows run by celebrities, I saw at most 56 listeners. Therefore, I thought that having up to six listeners on my show as a non-celebrity is considered very good.

I will never forget that the one song that propelled me to have up to six listeners on one show was "Love" by Keyshia Cole, featured on my Kazerific Show #4. Listeners simply were not that interested in Asian music songs on AMP. Nevertheless, I was happy to get this much attention.

Even a non-celebrity show gets up to twenty-something listeners if they play music that listeners like.

Financially, I knew that this day of closure might come since I have no idea how AMP is profiting from this service. The service is free and AMP obviously covered all the public performances licenses, blanket licenses, and synchronization licenses and whatever else that is needed to allow hosts to play music free to the public. With millions of licensed songs under their belt, I cannot imagine how much money they would need to secure the necessary licenses. Before starting AMP, I wanted to start a podcast, but it is impossible for me to play a licensed song as that would probably cost me a minimum of $6000 for one song, which is too steep of a price for me to pay alone with no guaranteed income from the podcast. For this reason alone, AMP is heaven sent and as I stress once again: the app is free. On top of that reason, AMP is paying creators with the AMP Creator fund, so I could only imagine that AMP is bleeding money. There are no advertisements on this app, which is also very unusual if they want to profit in some way. For me, it was only a matter of time before I would see the demise of AMP. If something is too good to be true, it will not last long.

I see that AMP itself has a lot of potential to grow and improve and I expected AMP to grow and improve. If only the executives thought of ways to save the app with maybe a change in revenue structure, it would allow AMP to continue. There is no right or wrong to this question on how to make AMP profitable and I heard about so many great ideas from the users themselves, but I can see that it was a hasty decision for management to just cut out AMP and make an insincere announcement for October, 2023. What kind of word is "deprecated" anyway? Who uses this terminology? Deprecated means something like a piece of software would not be in use in the future and the users are advised not to use it anymore. However, deprecated also implies that new software will most likely replace the current software. If that is the case, will Amazon launch something even better than AMP? Time will tell.

As a non-celebrity and a newbie, I found it extremely hard to grow my audience and show. It became increasingly hard after AMP was announced to close at the end of October. I think many users stopped using the app altogether. Some claim that there were more performance issues as a result, but I did not experience any unusual performance issues during my last weeks of using AMP.

I can't imagine how many countless hours I spent on my AMP shows. However, I wanted to document what a typical week was like for me.

As soon as I started my first official show, I knew I needed a way to keep track of the songs that I played in case anybody wanted to find it or listen to it later. Therefore, I started two playlists on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLriIGlsnrd4IvSRM6bTWPRM2R8BaVKpiZ - 113 videos total

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLriIGlsnrd4J083UIbL4_l2aUToIiq5-r - 116 videos total

I also saw that at least one listener of another AMP show asked about whether or not a host had a Spotify music list. I did not have a Spotify account, but I started to open a Spotify account to explore this option, but I never went ahead to create a playlist. Honestly, it is all about the wishes of the listeners. If many listeners wanted a Spotify list, I would seriously consider also upkeeping a list on Spotify and spent the extra time to do it.

Because there was no way to document my show to non-listeners of AMP and to also generate interest in my show, I needed to also maintain a blog about my show, which is the Kazerific blog, which barely has traffic and no good for advertising affiliates. It has been a long time since I launched a new blog. I have several existing blogs, but felt it would be good to start a completely new one to separate my interests or projects. Maintaining this blog took at least three hours after my shows to create an extra post to summarize what happened on my show and add the songs to the Youtube playlist. 

My main goal was to be a recipient of the AMP's creator fund, but it is very unclear exactly how one would be a recipient of the creator fund. I worked so hard to keep my shows running, but I have earned exactly $0 on AMP for the two months that I was on AMP. I did this entire experience for free. Even affiliate links wasn't working for me.

Ways to promote my show:

1) Start a blog, share my blog posts

2) Start an Instagram

3) Start an X account (formerly Twitter), share my blog posts

4) Attend and Support other AMP shows to increase exposure

5) Follow others on AMP in the hopes that they will also have interest in my shows

Luckily, I have some experience with Canva and can create some promotional material for my shows. AMP also provided some free templates to help creators promote their show. 

Initially, I was not going to use social media as I am not a well-known person and having no or little followers just looks bad. I also cannot spread myself thin as this is not my main job to update my social media often. Knowing myself, I get confused which account I am using if I have multiple accounts. I would also need to spend significant time to follow others and promote my show in various social medias in hopes that my show would have some interest. Honestly, I think all these are full time jobs and not something one person can handle unless the person can do this full time. I have another job as my main job and doing this was supposed to be for fun or on the side in hopes that I could reach success with it. I was thinking to go into high-traffic areas with Asian people or concert areas and promote my show there. If I wanted to go serious with it, those were my ideas.

Also, I think AMP is highly biased in their social media accounts (mostly on Instagram and some on X) to promote celebrity shows and not so much non-celebrities on AMP or lesser known shows. I found that their marketing strategies are weak. Celebrities don't have the influence that AMP wished for in reality and many opinions on AMP state that this is where AMP went wrong to consistently support celebrity shows that didn't give them the return on investment.

My target audience is already difficult to have on AMP. The first thing I noticed on AMP is that there is a minimal presence on K-pop music, but it is the most popular of the Asian genres of music. There is zero presence on AMP for Canto-pop music. I am sure there is some J-pop music presence on AMP, but it is here and there. There are no dedicated shows to J-pop music that I have seen. Amazingly, I have seen others host Indian music on rare occasions and that was great to see a variety of music on AMP. AMP is, at least at the time that I was actively on AMP, mostly catered to Hip-Hop, Rap, Oldies, R&B, and Church/Gospel music (I host Sunday shows and it's debatable that I should host at other times of the week and day). Otherwise, there are also talk shows such as sports and other topics. There are children shows, but that is a very small minority. Most shows have the host cussing or using swear words at one point or another so I really don't recommend children using AMP. There is an option to tick on each show that is geared towards adults. I kept my selection at family friendly for all my shows. If I dare say so myself, I host one of the best Asian music programming on AMP in my opinion. I am not perfect, but when it comes to formatting my show and organizing my show, I would say I am the most structured. I still have slip-ups when publicly speaking, but I usually continue on or glide over my mistakes to be professional. After all, it's a live show. I knew my target audience would be listeners who are not familiar with K-pop, C-pop, Canto-pop, or J-pop music or at best, casual listeners so I will assume that they need more background on why I am doing this show and playing these songs. I have so many regrets about so many songs that I did not have a chance to play on AMP.

My Kazerific show:

I mostly speak between each song to promote each song and talk about some things about the song and especially translating what the song meant for viewers who do not necessarily understand what the song is about. I might also talk about my life, but I keep that to a minimum. I notice AMP is not well known for talk shows, though I could totally see myself doing it, especially for a podcast. Doing research on the lyrics of the songs or researching the artist or song in general takes up about one hour of my time or maybe one and a half hour between my two shows. For this show, I am not selecting music for the sake of selecting music, but for what music inspired me in the last past week. This could be difficult if in the last week, I did not particularly find anything inspiring to me. My show, for sure, is mostly K-pop, but my interest lies also in American-pop, Canto-pop, C-pop, and sometimes J-pop.

My All Rounders at SM Entertainment show:

This is a more relaxed format with me sometimes playing two songs in a row without talking much. I could talk about the artists and songs, but in a more casual manner. For me, it was a lot about the enjoyment of the music. For the first show, I had named my show, "Pink Blood - SM Entertainment Highlights" as I wasn't sure what to name this show, but eventually settled on "All Rounders at SM Entertainment" as the title of my show. This is also the type of show in which listeners need to already be aware of who SM Entertainment and their artists are or it would probably be hard to enjoy or follow. However, I let the music speak for itself as it is good! I knew there would be little interest in this show, but as a Pink Blood fan, it was my duty to spread SM music to the world (NCT - Sorry I can't help but think of NCT's catchphrase).

How many hours do I spent on preparing the show every week?

1) Getting inspiration from social media to make a playlist: Probably one hour a day for six days. I finalize my playlists on Saturdays for my Sunday shows. I also keep notes on a piece of paper. Total: up to 6 hours

2) Setting the songs and creating a blog post (up to 1 hour and a half and another three hours after the show ends to finish the posts. I also listen to my own show to get the listener's experience. Total: 4 and a half hours)

3) Hosting the actual shows: (around 2 hours) I normally don't eat lunch or have a light meal before the show.

4) Last minute prep of my show (mute laptop, put phone on "do not disturb" mode to avoid interruptions) - 5 minutes (however, this could be merged with item 2)

This means I spent around 13 hours and 30 minutes at the minimum a week to host two shows. I am not counting actions done to promote the show through social media or on AMP. This could be already a part-time job. It became more difficult when I added blogging to my life and had to juggle multiple projects at once.

I also have a sheet titled "Prep Notes" that remind me of the things I must do before the show, show descriptions used for each show on AMP, opening introduction words of my show, and ending words for my show including sign off words. This document is reusable and can be updated as necessary. Over the course of my shows, I edit this document to improve it as needed. This guide keeps me sounding professional.

To workaround needing one listener on my show and normally nobody joins my show right away from the start of my show, I use another old iPhone that I have to log into AMP as a guest. This will allow me to play as many songs as I want until closure. Realistically, listeners will come in and out and only the most loyal will stay to listen to the entire show. My show is not hours long so one hour is not too much to ask to have somebody support my show. Most AMP shows are beyond one hour, in between one to two hours, but going beyond three hours is rare. If I wanted to talk more, I can easily have a show going into two hours, but I don't as I think one hour is probably the most a listener can spare. Even podcasts are ideally half hour to cover a commute from point A to B that a listener might have every day.

I figured out from another AMP creator how to submit songs that AMP doesn't have through a link for a form on AMP. However, I never found out if AMP added the songs because AMP is now closed. I am also not sure what the turnaround time would be to add a song that is not currently on the catalogue. There were numerous artists and especially older songs that are not found in the catalogue and I am a nostalgic-type person. I love new music, but also older music as well.

Ideally, I wanted to cater my show to the east coast audience as I am located in the east coast, but I keep localization to a minimum because ultimately, I don't want anybody to feel excluded as I grow my shows. I will speak about my experiences going to local concerts because I think that is exciting to talk about and share with the listeners.

I had a bought a dongle that can connect a professional microphone for use on AMP, but I never connected it. It would have been my long-term plan and next step to grow my show to use a professional microphone. I honestly think that using my iPhone 14 Pro Max with AMP works really well and I can hear my voice rather clearly. I also thought about thinking to co-hosts my shows with my daughter or husband. That would have been a fun show.

To make my shows last forever in my personal collection, I have screen recorded my shows on iPhone for every show. Listening to my show was amusing for my family. This is the only proof I have that my show existed and my experience on AMP was real. I did not save any special shows though as those shows would be very long. A one hour show takes up around 1 gigabyte of space.

In addition to the weekly shows that I have hosted, I have also hosted special shows such as for Labor Day and a Pre-Travel special show. These shows are definitely more than one hour long and I do not talk much on these shows and play music that fits the theme. If AMP continued on, I would have created a special Asian Halloween show, but I decided not to put in so much effort as AMP is closing down. As it turns out, AMP did not wait until midnight, but closed down in the evening a bit after 8:00 PM EST.

Getting people to download the AMP application in general is also a challenge. It was hard to ask my family members to download the application. Older generation folks did not understand technology and did not want to download any new apps on their phone. I tried my best to direct listeners to download the app online, but I am uncertain how many people downloaded the application because of my promotion, which is probably none. I can't ask others to go to the AMP website because my show is never live broadcasted there, which meant that AMP only plays the shows that are well known and not shows of others. I get a common question of whether or not people can listen to my show on the website instead as I think people don't like to download an app to their phone in general. I did not personally tell anybody that AMP is closed and I doubt they will ask me what happened to my show unless they were actively following it.

Initially, I did not want to start an Instagram fearing that it would be too much work to maintain, but because other hosts have their own Instagram and asked me for my account, I have created an account on the fly to increase my exposure and network. Amazingly, I have the most followers on this account whereas my X account or blog barely has exposure.

I have been on social media since the early 2000s and I realized that a lot of things have changed in social media. It is also harder for start-ups to obtain advertisement accounts. I realized that I have not kept up with the trends or changes of social media. It would be difficult for me to handle this all on my own and try to learn best practices that apply to 2023. I have experience in the music industry, yet the world is changing so fast. I am not doing any of this for the money, but I think having some type of income from my passion will allow me to explore my passion further and maybe hire some help. Now, I know why people have a Patreon accounts.

A common question I received is whether or not I am going to Stationhead, a competitor of AMP. I would say, "Never say never." Stationhead is already popular for K-pop music so it is not necessary for me to go there to promote K-pop music that is already popular on the platform. When I think about all the effort I put into AMP, it is a lot of work! If there is interest, I would definitely consider it. For now, I will continue to explore my options and you will not see the last of me. 

This is DJ Kazerific, signing off. Have a Kazerific Life!

DJ Kazerific