Amazon Music Teams With W+K For Global Brand Campaign
- by Colin Kirkland , November 10, 2022
Amazon Music’s update became available to Prime members on November 1.
For no additional cost, Prime members are now able to access 100 million songs in shuffle mode, ad-free podcasts, new original series and several new features like Podcast Previews designed to help members browse content on the platform.
Over the past two days, however, an onslaught of negative tweets and responses to the company's update have surfaced. Before the music catalog expansion, Prime members were able to access up to two million songs via a simple search. They could also download songs for offline listening with no Wifi (similar to Spotify).
Now, with a mandatory shuffle mode in place, users are unable to select individual songs from artists, albums, or playlists. To do so, they must spend $9 a month in addition on Amazon Music Unlimited.
One user, for example, tweeted @AmazonHelp on Monday that she lost all of the music purchased prior to the update. “Your music app is now unusable,” she tweeted. “I might as well turn on the radio.”
Despite widespread negative user response, “Have You Heard?” will promote the update by celebrating fans, their fluid interests and their journey of discovery across Amazon's new audio content, the company says.
“Our vision for ‘Have You Heard?’ was to introduce a dynamic and vibrant brand platform for Amazon Music designed to reflect how our brand ignites fandom and inspires unique and diverse fan journeys,” says Kelley Walton, head of brand, product and integrated marketing at Amazon Music. “The campaign spotlights various artists and top podcast creators, such as MrBallen and Keke Palmer, who recently launched her new podcast, Baby This is Keke Palmer exclusively on Amazon Music.”
The campaign's central film -- a minute-long compilation of fans from across the globe commenting on their favorite genres of music and podcasts -- is slated to premiere during this week's Thursday Night Football game.
Along with the commercial, the campaign consists of additional fan creative executions featuring artists and podcast hosts such as Guy Raz of “This is How I Built This,” A Tribe Called Quest, The 1975, and more.
“Have You Heard?” begins rolling out Thursday November 10 across OLV, OOH and digital/social video to promote the company’s update, and will continue to roll out in the coming months.
Stateside, the campaign will be featured in Times Square, Sunset Boulevard, and on the Las Vegas Strip. Additional global coverage will be deployed in Mexico, Brazil, the U.K, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan.
