Frequently Asked Questions

Amazon Music Unlimited offers access to over 75 million songs in HD, ad-free and on-demand. This comprehensive digital streaming service includes offline listening with unlimited skips, popular new releases, a wide variety of hand-curated playlists and stations, plus millions of podcast episodes.

More than 2 million hand-curated songs are instantly available as part of a Prime membership at no additional cost, including thousands of stations and top playlists.

Amazon Music also offers an ad-supported tier of 2 million songs, providing free streaming to anyone using the Amazon Music app on iOS, Android, Fire TV and Amazon Music on the web in the US, UK, and Germany.

This is effectively the same catalog that comes with Prime, only it includes advertising and doesn’t require a membership.

Content on Amazon Music is either delivered by a record label or distributor. If you’re signed to a label, they’ll take care of getting your music to us. If you’re independent, we have agreements with a number of different indie distributors who handle licensing, distribution, payment, and other artists services to support getting your music heard on Amazon.

Check out CD Baby, TuneCore, DistroKid, Symphonic, STEM, AWAL, and Ditto as options. Each service is unique in what they offer, so be sure to read up when making your decision.

The easiest way to do this is via an aggregator. Checkout FUGA, Labelcamp, and Consolidated Independent. Each service is unique in what they offer, so be sure to read up when making your decision.

Your distributor has their own content delivery deadlines, but once they send it through to Amazon Music, we make every effort to have your content live on our service within 24 hours. Periodically, there may be unforeseen delays, but we’ll work to make sure it gets up quickly.

Royalties are paid to rightsholders in each country where our services are offered based on usage. For example, in Amazon Music Unlimited, in a given country we pay the recording royalties owed to each label/distributor, and the publishing royalties owed to each publisher/collecting society/performing rights organization, based on usage in each subscription tier (e.g., Individual, Family, HD). The rightsholders will then distribute the royalties Amazon Music has paid to them in accordance with the terms of their agreements with the artists.

ASIN stands for Amazon Standard Identification Number. It’s a unique, 10-character alphanumeric used for product identification within Amazon. It’s a lot like a barcode or serial number. Each artist, album, track, playlist, and retail item within Amazon has an ASIN.

You can locate an Amazon ASIN number in a few different places: product web address, product details, or by using a software tool for ASIN lookups. On Amazon Music an ASIN can be found in the product deep link under Share and is located after the qualifying text "artists/", "trackAsin=" or "albums/" as seen with the example below.

Prime Music is a hand-curated service with a catalog of only 2 million songs. Talk to your label or distributor to get more information regarding Prime Music’s catalog.

If you didn’t add your music to Amazon, it’s likely been delivered by either your label or distributor. For any issues, please reach out to them directly to resolve. If your label or distributor did not add your music, and you believe it should not be on Amazon, you can make a claim to have it removed by filling out this infringement form which will contact our copyright team.

Contact your label or distributor and ask them to issue a takedown request.

We support multiple main artist and featured artist roles. Contact your label or distributor and ask them to add the other artist as main artist or featured artist

As long as your name is listed as a main artist within the metadata, Alexa should respond correctly.

We license from both LyricFind and MusixMatch to publish lyrics on Amazon Music. For the best chances of displaying your lyrics in the Amazon Music app, make sure you have a publishing deal with a publisher that distributes through either LyricFind or MusixMatch.

If Alexa is having trouble with or mispronouncing your name or releases, please let your label or distributor know the proper pronunciation and provide a link to the product on Amazon Music.

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) is the entity that will administer blanket mechanical licenses for digital music in the United States beginning on January 2021. It was established pursuant to a federal law, the Music Modernization Act of 2018, to help get music publishers and songwriters paid. To learn more about the MLC and see what it can do for you, please visit www.themlc.com

X-Ray surfaces facts and insights about a song as it is playing—including credits, related music recommendations, and more — giving fans the ability to dive deeper into your music.  

• Credits: a list of individuals who contributed to the song’s production
• Related: playlists curated by Amazon Music that feature the song
• Buzz: fun facts and trivia about the song, album, or artist

X-Ray is available to all Amazon Music customers using iOS and Android devices. Simply tap to play music and look for the X-Ray icon at the bottom-center of the Now Playing screen.

Credits reflect metadata provided by record labels, distributors, and third-party data providers. Buzz content (US & UK only) is provided by record labels, distributors, first- and third-party data providers, and the Amazon Music research team. If you’re not seeing this information surfacing for your music, start by contacting your record label or distributor to confirm they are providing us with the relevant information.

If you see incorrect credits listed, please ask your record label or distributor to submit updated credit information. If you continue to see inaccurate or incomplete credits, or you feel a piece of Buzz content is incorrect, please contact us via the Amazon Music for Artists app.

To do so, log in, go to Settings > User Settings > Support and select “Other Issue.” For the quickest resolution, be sure to provide the following:

• Artist Name
• Track Name
• URL to the track (either from within Amazon Music or the Amazon website)

If you notice music on your artist profile from another band or artist of the same name, please help us correct the error with the following steps in your Amazon Music for Artists account:

1. Click on the incorrect album/song
2. Click on the three dot menu next to the title
3. Select "Report Issue"
4. Once the form is complete, click "Submit"

Our catalog experts will investigate and resolve the issue as quickly as possible, please allow up to 4 weeks for the changes to reflect on Amazon Music.

Artist names on Amazon Music can be incorrect for multiple reasons. The most popular being that an artist's music is incorrectly merged with another artist with the same name. If this is the case, please let us know using the "Report Issue" tool in Amazon Music for Artists, under User Settings. You can use this tool even if you have not been able to successfully claim your artist profile in Amazon Music for Artists.

Alternatively, if the music on your artist page is correct on Amazon Music, then it is possible that your artist name was delivered incorrectly. To update your artist name you'll need to work with your label or distributor to make the requested changes and re-deliver to Amazon Music.

In the Amazon Music for Artists app, go to any album or song report page and click or tap the share link at the top of the page.

It's easy to share from the Amazon Music streaming app, too. From any piece of content, simply open the three dot menu and select the share icon.

Related Playlists includes playlists on which your tracks are featured.

Popular Songs and Popular Albums are influenced by customer interaction with your music. Popularity calculations consider both on-demand as well as lean-back listening, such as within playlists and stations. We recognize that listening habits vary between territories and service tiers, and as a result, what is shown as "popular" reflects listening specific to the customer’s territory and service tier.

Head to the Amazon Music for Artists app, and follow the instructions below:

If accessing Amazon Music for Artists on iOS/Android:

• Select the artist you want to manage
• Tap the Profile icon in the bottom right hand corner
• Under Profile & Tools, customize both your Profile Photo and Background Image using their respective edit buttons
• Choose image
• Resize your image to look your best. 
• Tap Save
  

If accessing Amazon Music for Artists on web:

• Select the artist you want to manage
• Click Profile & Tools under Artist Tools in the left side bar
• Under Profile Details, customize both your Profile Photo and Background Image using the editing tools
• Choose Image
• Resize your image to look your best. 
• Click Save

To look your best on Amazon Music, be certain your images meet the following requirements:

• Files must be either jpeg or png
• Profile Photo must be at least 500x 500 pixels
• Background Image must be at least 1920 x 1440 pixels. For best results, we recommend the artist’s face be in the upper 40% of the image, roughly centered horizontally. See image below as a guide.
• Image file must be no larger than 15MB
• Avoid text, logos and busy images
• Image should not contain violence or partial/explicit nudity
• Images should not contain any infringing materials. You attest you have all the legal rights to do so as described in our T&C. 

artist: Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra

Trick question! Amazon Music does not currently support artist bios at this time.

You have two options: You can ship your items to an Amazon Fulfillment Center and have Amazon manage all post-sale operations. Or, if you have storage and shipping systems you trust in place or prefer to handle post-sale operations yourself, you can opt to self-fulfill. Learn about how to become a seller on Amazon here.

Contact us with your Seller ID and sellable ASINs at artist-merch-shop@amazon.com. Please note these curated storefronts are currently only accessible to shoppers in the US.

Our print-on-demand service, Merch by Amazon, offers a quick, easy, no-risk way to sell on Amazon.com. Simply upload your designs — new or existing — and we take care of the rest. There's zero investment required, and once your designs are approved they can be on the site within a day. Learn how to get started here.

Once you have completed the MbA application process, please email the following information to artist-merch-shop@amazon.com so we can get your products routed to the Artist Merch Shop:

• MbA Account Name
• MbA Registration Email
• Contact Name
• Contact Email
• Artist Name or List of Artists
• Headquarters (City, State, Country)
• Do you own/have the rights for North America? (Yes/No)

Yes. Our print-on-demand service, Merch by Amazon (MbA), is a great option for both evergreen items and limited editions because there is no upfront inventory investment and creating an account is quick and simple. Once you become an Amazon Seller, you can offer new items with MbA and sell your existing products using our Fulfillment by Amazon or Fulfillment by Merchant solutions — whichever best fits your needs.

IMPORTANT: Once you have completed the MbA application process, please email the following information to artist-merch-shop@amazon.com so we can get your products routed to the Artist Merch Shop:

• MbA Account Name
• MbA Registration Email
• Contact Name
• Contact Email
• Artist Name or List of Artists
• Headquarters (City, State, Country)
• Do you own/have the rights for North America? (Yes/No)

Yes. You can sell your merch on Amazon in addition to other retail locations or points of sale.

Although Amazon Seller programs are available in countries around the world, the Amazon Artist Merch Shop is currently only accessible on Amazon.com (not Amazon.uk, Amazon.jp, etc.).

• Merch by Amazon: Items are available for sale to all customers shopping on Amazon.com. See shipping details here.
• Fulfillment by Amazon: Once you become an Amazon Seller, you’ll need to ship your merch to an Amazon Fulfillment Center. You can find out more about Global Selling here.
• Self-Fulfillment: Since you are responsible for fulfilling and shipping each order, it is up to you where you will ship your products to. Learn more about shipping costs and how Amazon can help here.

You can monitor your print on demand sales directly in your Merch by Amazon account (for print on demand items) or in Amazon Seller Central (for Fulfillment by Amazon or Self-fulfillment sales).

If you believe that an item available for sale on Amazon contains content that is infringing on your intellectual property, report it to Amazon using the proper online form (US, UK, DE). We encourage rights owners who have concerns regarding the misuse of their intellectual property to notify us using the Report a Violation tool in Amazon Brand Registry. If you're not enrolled in Brand Registry, Amazon provides a publicly available form for reporting alleged intellectual property infringements such as copyright, trademark, and patent concerns.

There could be many different reasons as to why your album is listed as “out of stock” on the Amazon retail storefront. Get in touch with your label or distributor to address this status with someone on the Amazon Music team.

To link your Twitch channel, login to Amazon Music for Artists. Click on Profile & Tools within your artist account, and select Connect your Twitch Channel. Here, sign-in using your Twitch credentials to authorize Twitch livestreams in the Amazon Music streaming app. If you do not have a Twitch account, click About and Get Started with Twitch. Please note it may take up to 3 hours to connect your channel.

To remove Twitch livestreams from appearing in the Amazon Music app, login to Amazon Music for Artists. From your artist account, head to ‘Profile & Tools’. Click on the icon to the right of your channel name to unlink the account. You'll be asked to confirm the action. Please note it may take up to 3 hours for your changes to take effect.

Livestreaming metrics can only be seen and viewed through your Twitch channel dashboard. You can navigate there by clicking on Insights > Channel Analytics.

Twitch is still your go-to destination for originating a livestream.

Twitch Affiliate status unlocks the ability to start earning money on your channel on Twitch, including bits and subscriptions from fans. You can also run ads on your channel, link to music and merchandise stores, and allow fans to donate directly.

Artists who connect their Twitch channel within Amazon Music for Artists and have at least 5K Fans will be offered Twitch Affiliate status. Once you meet the Affiliate criteria, keep an eye out from Twitch on next steps to unlock the benefit. You should receive an email from them within 3 weeks.

Amazon Music for Artists is available on both web and mobile. Click here for web. On mobile, head to the Apple App or Google Play Store and download the Amazon Music for Artists app. Once the app is open, you will be directed to sign-in using an Amazon retail account. If you do not have an Amazon retail account, you will need to create one in order to continue going through the sign-up and artist claim flow.

To claim an artist:

1. Search and select any artist
2. Press Claim This Artist
3. Fill out the requested application fields. If you are a CD Baby, DistroKid, TuneCore, or TuneCore Japan artist, you get instant access to the app when you authenticate using your distributor account login. We also provide the option for anyone to connect with their artist's social media accounts for faster verification. The more information you are able to provide, the easier it will be to verify your relationship to the artist you are claiming.

Reach out to your Amazon Music team member for access to Amazon Music for Artists.

There are three levels of account access within Amazon Music for Artists.

• Owners are the first people who successfully register an approved claim on behalf of an artist. Owner accounts can do and see everything within Amazon Music for Artists.
• Admins have the ability to view all team members, add or remove individuals and assign access type to the artist account.
• Viewers can view data but are unable to take action within the app.

Anyone with either Owner or Admin access can add another person to their team by navigating to Settings in the upper right hand of the app from any artist page. From there, select “Manage Team Members” and click on “Add Team Member”. You’ll be promoted to enter the invitee’s information including name, email, and assign level of app access (Admin or Viewer).

Owners or Admins can remove a team member by navigating to Settings in the upper right hand of the app, selecting Manage Team Members, clicking on the user’s name, and selecting “Remove Team Member”.

Your Amazon retail account is used to access Amazon Music for Artists and can be updated here.

We recommend connecting your artist socials in the claim verification workflow for the smoothest approval. If that is not possible for whatever reason, please provide us with any of the following under additional information:

• a link to an official artist website where we see the email address you’re using to claim your Amazon Music for Artists profile.
• a link to a social media channel where we see your name and/or the email address you’re using to claim your Amazon Music for Artists profile is featured under “About”. The most helpful links are to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, etc.
• a link to a management company website where we see the artist's name listed on the roster. Keep in mind, if you’re a manager we also want to see that the management company’s name is the domain name of the email address you’re using to claim the profile.

Your first artist claim will need to be approved by our team before you can issue another.

All of our data within the app is a global summary of data across all tiers of Amazon Music’s service. The Last 24 Hour view within the app leverages the date & time in your phone settings and displays report tables in your current time zone. All other report time tables are shown in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Data within the Amazon Music for Artists app is available from January 1, 2018. We aggregate All Time data weekly report views for Total Streams, Total Listener, and Total Voice Request graphs.

We strive to provide the most current data available within our app. Streaming data updates multiple times an hour. Other features in the Amazon Music for Artists app such as Fan Tiering and Daily Voice Index are updated periodically as noted in the app.

A stream is any play greater than 30 seconds within the time period selected.

A listener is the count of unique listeners in the time period selected.

Your music may have been released in various configurations (explicit/clean/deluxe/standard), across different labels or distributors, in different territories or at different points of your career. We aggregate this data and consolidate into a single entry, which is why you will see one album/single cover art to represent all products.

Only if you are listed as a Main Artist on that track's metadata

Source of Stream is the location within the Amazon Music app from which a stream has occurred:

• Stations - streams from Amazon Music stations. Stations are personalized and endless streams of music, kind of like a radio station.
• Amazon Playlists - streams included on any Amazon Music curated playlist. Our programmers curate thousands of playlists across different genres, eras, contexts, and locales. These playlists offer a fixed number of songs and are updated frequently to ensure they stay current; our most important playlists are refreshed every week.
• User Libraries and Playlists - streams from a user’s My Music library or from any user-generated playlist.
• Browse and Search - streams generated from either Home (the Amazon Music consumer app start page), a search results page, artist detail pages, album and song detail pages, Charts, and our New Release page.

The Daily Voice Index helps evaluate fan engagement on Alexa relative to artists of similarly sized audiences – which we hope will help you measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and give more reason to include Alexa in your promotion. Loosely speaking, we calculate the Daily Voice Index based on how many fans are requesting Alexa to play an artist's music, including requests by artist name, track, album, or lyrics. We then compare this number against other artists of a similar size in a trailing 7 day period to determine the median. We then distribute the artist on a spectrum of “Cool”, “Warm”, “Hot”, or “On Fire” depending on where they perform compared to the median. The Index is updated daily.

We strive to give you as much real-time data as possible to help inform your marketing decisions. As such, data available in Amazon Music for Artists is subject to change and should not be used for financial reporting purposes. For financial or royalty questions, please contact your label/distributor.

Any explicit request to Alexa of your music that matched an artist, album, song, or lyric in our catalog. Voice Requests will either be: Requests could be either: “Alexa, play the artist _”, “Alexa, play the song _”, “Alexa, play the album_”, or “Alexa, play the song that goes_”. Streams of your artist music from within a playlist or a station are not included in this metric.

These are your listeners who are past the initial discovery phase and have actively returned back to your music, added you to their library and playlists, followed you, or purchased digital/physical music (except on amazon.jp). On average, your Fans drive over half of your total streams on Amazon Music, and over one third of them will continue to stream your music in the next 30 days. See how many Fans you have by navigating to the “Fans” tab of the Amazon Music for Artists app.

Superfans are a small, but extremely valuable, subset of your most passionate Fans. On average, these listeners drive almost one third of your total streams, and the majority will continue to listen to your music in the next 30 days. See how many Superfans you have by navigating to the “Fans” tab of the Amazon Music for Artists app.

The New Adds To Playlist module is sorted by descending add date (with newest at the top).

The NEW sticker calls attention to any song which has been included in a playlist within the last 14 days. You’ll encounter the NEW sticker within the Featured in Playlist widget on Song Detail Pages, as well as Songs On This Playlist widgets on Playlist Detail Pages.

Head to the Amazon Music for Artists app, and follow the instructions below:

If accessing Amazon Music for Artists on iOS/Android:

• Select the artist you want to manage
• Tap the Profile icon in the bottom right hand corner
• Under Profile & Tools, customize both your Profile Photo and Background Image using their respective edit buttons
• Choose image
• Resize your image to look your best. 
• Tap Save

If accessing Amazon Music for Artists on web:

• Select the artist you want to manage
• Click Profile & Tools under Artist Tools in the left side bar
• Under Profile Details, customize both your Profile Photo and Background Image using the editing tools
• Choose Image
• Resize your image to look your best. 
• Click Save

To look your best on Amazon Music, be certain your images meet the following requirements:

• Files must be either jpeg or png
• Profile Photo must be at least 500x 500 pixels. 
• Background Image must be at least 1920 x 1440 pixels. For best results, we recommend the artist’s face be in the upper 40% of the image, roughly centered horizontally. See image below as a guide.
• Image file must be no larger than 15MB. 
• Avoid text, logos and busy images.
• Image should not contain violence or partial/explicit nudity.
• Images should not contain any infringing materials. You attest you have all the legal rights to do so as described in our T&C. 

artist: Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra

Owners or Admins within Amazon Music for Artists can upload an artist image to display on Amazon Music and the Amazon retail website. These permissions are set under Manage Team in Amazon Music for Artists

New images take about 48 hours to appear across Amazon Music and the Amazon retail website. 

On mobile, head to Settings > Support within the Amazon Music for Artists app and select “Other Issues”. Be sure to provide as much information as possible on your issues so our customer support team can assist. 

Once your new music has been delivered to us, it will appear in 'Profile & Tools' under the header "New Releases" in the Amazon Music for Artists app. Any team member with Owner or Admin access will be able to submit one track per new release. One pitch will be accepted for each team type i.e. Artist team vs. Label team.

Ready to make a pitch? Jump into the app.

For more information, check out our infographic here.

If it has been more than 24 hours since your new release was successfully delivered to Amazon Music and you still don't see it under "New Releases", try these troubleshooting steps:

1. Confirm with your distributor that your release has been successfully delivered to Amazon Music.
2. Confirm your new release is eligible for pitching - see following FAQ.
3. If by release date, you still don't see your content appearing in "New Releases", check to ensure your content is available for streaming from your artist profile on the Amazon Music app. Should you encounter a profile mapping issue, Report Issue within Amazon Music for Artists.

Some of the most common reasons a release may be ineligible to be pitched are:

1. it has been pitched previously by another team member.
2. it is more than 14 days after street date based on album-level metadata.
3. it has been previously released on Amazon Music

Once a pitch has been submitted, there is no way to make further changes. Be sure to coordinate with your team to ensure all important information has been included.

All pitches received through the tool are considered global. As part of your pitch, feel free to provide us country-specific marketing information in the open text field.

We will show which content has been pitched, but we will not show specific statuses regarding if a pitch has been reviewed, accepted/placed, rejected, etc.

Spotlight gives artists the ability to connect with fans by sharing music (any song, album, or playlist) alongside a personal voice message.

To create a Spotlight, head to Profile & Tools within the Amazon Music for Artists app.

Any artist with 2,000 or more fans can create a Spotlight. You must be an Owner or Admin of an artist's team in order to publish content. We hope to extend Spotlight access to more artists soon.

US-based fans will find your Spotlight at the top of your artist profile page in the Amazon Music app and via the activity feed. They can also ask, “Alexa, play the [ARTIST NAME] Spotlight on Amazon Music” to listen on any Echo device.

Spotlight playback is currently available to US-based fans. We hope to expand accessibility to listeners in other territories soon.

From the Amazon Music for Artists mobile app, go to Settings > User Settings > Support > Artist Profile Page & Tools > Spotlight and let us know what you are experiencing. One of our support team members will do our best to assist you.

Each artist can only have one Spotlight, but it can be updated as often as you would like. Past content is not saved.

Amazon Music for Artists is available in English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Japanese. We plan to add support for additional languages in the future.

If you notice music on your artist profile from another band or artist of the same name, please help us correct the error with the following steps in your Amazon Music for Artists account:

1. Click on the incorrect album/song
2. Click on the three dot menu next to the title
3. Select "Report Issue"
4. Once the form is complete, click "Submit"

Our catalog experts will investigate and resolve the issue as quickly as possible, please allow up to 4 weeks for the changes to reflect on Amazon Music.

This may be a profile page and/or content delivery issue. If you can locate the content in the Amazon Music app on another profile page, you can help us correct this error using Amazon Music for Artists and following these steps:

1. Head to User Settings > Help
2. Select Report Issue
3. Select "My content is on a different artist profile"
4. Once the form is complete, click "Submit"

Our catalog experts will investigate and resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

If this is a content delivery issue, we encourage you to reach out to your label or distributor to deliver the missing title to Amazon Music.

If you need assistance, get in touch with someone on our customer service team.

• On the mobile app, click the Settings cog in the top right hand corner, select User Settings, and then click Support under Help.
• On web, User Settings can be found in the bottom left hand corner.

Amazon Music is one of the largest on-demand streaming music platforms with 55 million global customers and growing rapidly. It is also tightly integrated with the Alexa ecosystem, delivering a best in class experience for smart speaker users. For content creators, enabling your content to be distributed on Amazon Music allows you to grow your audience by reaching these customers, many of whom will be new to podcasting.

You can submit your podcast’s RSS feed using our opt-in & submission form here. Please only submit one feed URL per series (all episodes will be ingested from the feed URL). You will be required to agree to our content license agreement before we can carry your podcast content.

Once you have submitted your podcast, please allow up to 24 hours for your show to become listed. The best way to know if your podcast is available is to search for your show on Amazon Music. If you're not finding your podcast & you submitted more than 24 hours ago, please reach out to our Amazon Music Podcast Team at podcasters@amazon.com

We stream directly from your hosting provider so all your metrics will be unaffected. If you are running advertising through a dynamic ad insertion system, things will work the same as on other major podcasting platforms.

For all promotional requests, please send an email to podcastpromo@amazon.com and include the following information:

• Publisher (or Podcast Network) name:
• Contact name:
• Series name:
• Series description:
• Promotion territory (Worldwide, US, UK, DE, JP):
• Trailer release date:
• First episode release date:
• Release schedule (daily, weekly, etc.):
• Desired promotion date:
• Social media accounts used to promote shows:
• Podcasts’ original working files (i.e. layered PSD file) and host headshot(s) (if applicable)

If you need to remove your podcast from Amazon Music, please contact our Amazon Music Podcast Team at podcasters@amazon.com

For questions about your podcast on Amazon Music, you can contact our Amazon Music Podcast Team for support. We try to respond to all requests within 72 hours.

US & Global - podcasters@amazon.com
Mexico - podcasters-mx@amazon.com
Brazil - podcsters-br@amazon.com
Europe - podcasters-eu@amazon.com
Japan - jp-podcasters@amazon.com
India - podcasters-in@amazon.com