Steve Boom | |
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Born | 1968 (age 55–56)[1] |
Citizenship | U.S., Belgium[2] |
Education | |
Occupations |
Steve Boom is Vice President of Audio (encompassing Amazon Music, Audible, and Wondery[4]), Twitch & Games at Amazon.[2] Before that, he was the Vice President of Amazon Music.
Boom received a JD from Harvard Law School[5] in 1994.[3] After law school, Boom began his career as an attorney at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C.,[6] and then Venture Law Group in Silicon Valley, advising software and internet startups.[7]
He joined Yahoo Inc. in 1998[8] as director of business development for Yahoo Europe.[9] In October 2002, he became the company's senior vice president of business and enterprise services.[10] Boom worked at Yahoo for 10 years, departing in 2008[11] as senior vice president of the Connected Life division,[7] where he managed the company's mobile and broadband businesses.[12] Boom led the rollout of Yahoo's mobile advertising network[13] and Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0.[14] He also played a role in Yahoo's investment in speech recognition company Vlingo.[15]
In January 2009,[7] Boom became CEO of mig33, a mobile social networking service popular primarily outside the U.S.[16] He transitioned to the executive chairman role in March 2010.[17] Boom joined Loopt as its president in August 2010[18] and was also an adviser to video service Vuclip.[19]
Boom joined Amazon in 2012 to develop and launch the Amazon Music business.[4] He led the transition of the business from selling MP3 music downloads to providing music streaming,[20] including the introduction of Amazon Prime Music in 2014[21] and the rollout of the Amazon Music Unlimited streaming service in 2016.[22] In January 2020, Boom reported that Amazon Music had 55 million users.[23] As head of Amazon Music, he led the 2021[24] acquisitions of podcast network Wondery[25] and podcast hosting and advertising company Art19[26] as Amazon Music expanded into podcasts.[25] In 2022, Boom also led the expansion of the service to offer streaming of its entire catalog to Amazon Prime members[20] and the rollout of Amazon Music Live, a concert series airing on Amazon Prime Video and Twitch following Thursday Night Football.[27]
In December 2022, Boom took on expanded leadership to include Audible, Twitch and Amazon Games, reporting to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.[28] Ryan Redington, general manager of Amazon Music, reports to Boom.[2]
Additionally, Boom is the longest-running chairman of music aid organization MusiCares,[4] first joining the organization's board in 2017.[29] In this role, he helped create the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund[20] and guide distribution of $35 million in COVID-19 pandemic aid.[30][31]