Skift Take
Amazon is hiring a Senior Program Manager, Music to "dramatically improve" the music festival experience for fans.
In a job posting on its own job site, Amazon inadvertently announced a desire to have a major presence at music festivals. With Amazon commissions appearing in stores and even Amazon brick and mortar stores beginning to materialize, this hardly comes as a surprise. According to the job posting, there are seven areas Amazon want to make an impact at music festivals. Let’s take a look at the areas they want to get involved in.
On-Site Food and Product Delivery
Last year, Amazon launched a grocery store under its “Amazon Go” banner. The concept store allows shoppers to walk in, get the groceries they need, and walk out. All without going to a checkout. Amazon said they have no plan to expand into groceries but this concept could work well at music festivals. With food stall queues being a top gripe for festival goers, a frictionless experience would be a welcome addition.
Could this be the opportunity to test Amazon’s fabled drone delivery service? It’s doubtful but stranger things have happened. The delivery drones made an appearance at SXSW yesterday but for now, they’re completely grounded.
Custom Tour Merchandise for Purchase
Like the above, this would probably be a frictionless shopping experience. With some products being potentially high-value, Amazon may employ the help of vending machines.
Artist Meet and Greets
2017 is all about the event experience and allowing festival goers to meet and greet artists can take that to the next level. Meeting artists can give the festival goer a unique opportunity to capture and share the moment via social media. This is a great opportunity for Amazon to exploit the brand exposure that brings with it. This could be an opportunity for Amazon to sell advertising or make branded partnerships with event sponsors.
Free WiFi
With tens of thousands of festival goers trying to access social media, cellular networks often become swamped and the area effectively becomes a communications black spot. Giving festival goers the gift of free WiFi will also give them the ability to share the moments that matter to them.
Along with providing WiFi at the event itself, Amazon could also empower festival goers to relive the festival through curated playlists on its Prime Music streaming service.
Water
Amazon is all about innovation so how they plan to upgrade water remains to be seen. There will no doubt be an effort to be environmentally conscious so perhaps this will involve some kind of refill system.
Charging Stations
With more sharing going on, device batteries are going to take a hammering. Charging stations similar to those found at airports could provide the extra juice needed to share more of those big festival moments.
Restrooms
The restroom experience is one area that could definitely be improved. Perhaps an enhanced bathroom experience could be offered to those willing to pay for the extra perks. There could also be a bonus here for Amazon Prime members.
First The Music Festival Experience, Then The World?
Whether Amazon will stop at improving the music festival experience at preexisting festivals or use this as a kind of pre-alpha testing phase for a complete Amazon branded festiva remains to be seen. It wouldn’t be the first time Amazon has disrupted an industry and it probably won’t be the last. Look out for the Amazon music festival experience near you.
In Conclusion
Event experience is everything and Amazon sees this as a great opportunity to step in and innovate for the greater good. Amazon may have found a great niche here and may have even created a new age in music festival experience. It will be interesting to see how many of these innovations also roll out to the wider event industry later on.
