Amazon seeks music curators for Australian streaming rival

As Amazon prepares for its local launch, the multi-national e-commerce company is also readying its music strategy with the posting of four Sydney-based jobs in the last 24 hours.

According to job listings on Amazon Jobs, Amazon is seeking a Music Curator, a Senior Music Curator, a Senior Marketing Manager, and a Head of Digital Music.

In advertising the Senior Music Curator role, the listing says the successful applicant will:

• Deliver high quality music programming including playlists and stations
• Create and manage a rolling editorial calendar
• Conceive and execute a continuous content improvement process
• Drive improvements of tools and techniques required to support a growing curated music offering
• Work with the Content Licensing and Vendor Management teams to identify content to include in the service
• Use data to continuously refine our content offering to ensure a fresh and compelling user experience for each customer

For the Music Curator role, Amazon is seeking someone with “3 to 5 years in work experience in music curation, radio programming, or A&R.” While “experience in the Australian Media Industry is strongly preferred” for the Head of Digital Music role.

Amazon has been beefing up its Australian team for some time; it officially confirmed it has more than 1000 Australian employees earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the trademark for Amazon Music was lodged with IP Australia in June 2014 and isn’t up for renewal until June 2024.

It’s also important to remember Amazon’s quiet soft-launch last November of Amazon Prime, its membership program that gives customers access to streaming video, music, e-books, free shipping and other services and deals. While the soft launch was for Video only, it opened blocking connections from Australian IP addresses and began accepting Australian credit cards.

As the world’s largest retail provider, Amazon’s local launch should have local retailers like Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi shaking in their boots. Investment bank Citigroup has said Amazon is on average about 15% cheaper than Australia’s consumer electronic retailers.

Last year Amazon generated $US136 billion in revenue and by the end of 2018, it will have over 7% of all retail sales in the US.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.