Amazon Lays Off Staff at Live-Radio Platform Amp Amid Hiring Slowdown
Written by djfrosty on October 31, 2022
Amazon has laid off around 150 employees at its recently launched live-radio app Amp, according to a report at Business Insider. Though Amazon would not comment on the numbers in the report, the company confirms to Billboard that it has chosen “to consolidate a few teams” at the division.
“At Amazon we think big, experiment, and invest in new ideas to delight customers,” said the company in a statement. “We also continually evaluate the progress and potential of our products and services to deliver customer value, and we regularly make adjustments based on those assessments. We’ve made the decision to consolidate a few teams so we can focus on the growth and scaling of Amp.”
Amazon is working to identify other opportunities within the company for affected employees.
Launched in March, Amp allows users to host their own shows by streaming music from a catalog of tens of millions of licensed songs from the three major labels, as well as Indies including Beggars Group, PIAS, Believe and CD Baby. Though it’s designed primarily for non-celebrity creators, Amp also hosts or has announced shows from high-profile artists including Pusha T, Tinashe, Travis Barker, Lil Yachty, Lindsey Stirling, Big Boi and Nicki Minaj, who brought her Apple Music show Queen Radio to the platform at launch. In September, Amp announced it would launch a monthly fund to reward emerging U.S.-based creators for building loyal audiences on the app.
The cuts at Amp come on the heels of Amazon’s Q3 earnings report on Thursday (Oct. 27), when the company revealed it had grown its headcount by just 21,000 employees — a sharp year-over-year drop after it added 133,000 employees over the same period in 2021.
On a call with reporters, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company was “preparing for what could be a slower growth period” in an anticipation of an economic slowdown, citing inflation and rising energy costs, among other factors. “We are going to be very careful on our hiring,” Olsavsky added. “We certainly are looking at our cost structure and looking for areas where we can save money.”