Amazon Music elevated Ryan Redington to general manager on Tuesday (July 18). The announcement was made by Steve Boom, who joined Amazon’s senior leadership team in December, where he now oversees not just Amazon Music but Audible, Wondery, Amp, Twitch and Amazon Games.
Redington has “played a number of critical leadership roles in Amazon Music’s journey to becoming one of the leading global streaming services today,” Boom wrote to staff in an email. “… He’s earned trust with the industry across dozens of artist partnerships, finding new ways to scale their new releases through global concerts and festival livestreams. Amazon Music already pays rightsholders billions annually, and under Ryan’s leadership we will continue to build a foundation to help artists scale and monetize their fanbases in new ways.”
Redington is a 15-year veteran of Amazon, starting on the video team and then moving over to the physical sales side of the organization, focusing on CDs and vinyl. He subsequently shifted to digital and was part of the team that launched Amazon Music back in 2014.
In his wide-ranging current role, he oversees artist and genre marketing, label and artist relations, playlisting and programming, livestreams and editorial content, physical merchandise, and artist analytics.
Last year, Amazon Music Unlimited raised its price for Prime subscribers and expanded its ad-free offering for Prime members from 2 million songs to more than 100 million songs. Prime members can only listen to all that music on shuffle, unless they upgrade to Amazon Music Unlimited.
“We need to think about a streaming service as not just being a catalog of recorded music, but being a host of services that connect artists and fans together,” Boom told The Verge in November. “… When you get into areas like merch, there are unlimited amounts that people are willing to spend to connect with their favorite artist and to represent their fandom. Obviously, Amazon has a position as a pretty big global retailer that is good at e-commerce and logistics, and it is a brand that people really trust as a place to spend money. I think that sets us up really well for the future.”
In January, Amazon announced that it was upping prices again for U.S. and U.K. subscribers. Amazon Music Unlimited went from $9.99 to $10.99 for individual subscribers in the U.S. and increased from $4.99 to $5.99 for subscribers to the student plan.
