Publishers may be wary of reinforcing Amazon’s market power in yet another vertical.
Amazon has been briefing publishing executives about plans to launch a content licensing marketplace that would allow publishers to sell their content directly to AI companies, positioning itself as a direct competitor to Microsoft’s PCM .
Key Distinguishing Features
Unlike Microsoft’s standalone PCM platform (link in comments for the TNPS take on that), Amazon’s marketplace appears deeply integrated with its existing AWS infrastructure.
According to reports from The Information and TechCrunch, Amazon circulated slides ahead of an AWS publishers’ conference (held yesterday, 10 February) that positioned the marketplace alongside core AWS AI products including Bedrock (Amazon’s foundation model platform) and Quick Suite productivity tools.
This integration suggests Amazon is approaching the market from a cloud infrastructure angle rather than a pure content-licensing play. Publishers using AWS services would theoretically have a seamless pipeline to monetise content within the same ecosystem where they already host and distribute material.
Current Status and Amazon’s Position
Amazon has not officially confirmed the plans. A spokesperson provided a bland statement: “Amazon has built long-lasting, innovative relationships with publishers across many areas of our business, including AWS, Retail, Advertising, AGI, and Alexa. We are always innovating together to best serve our customers, but we have nothing specific to share on this subject at this time”
Strategic Context
Amazon already has significant skin in the game. The company reportedly pays more than $20 million annually to The New York Times for content used in AI model training and Alexa features. It also recently launched a free web-based Alexa+ assistant incorporating content from over 200 media outlets.
Competitive Implications
The emergence of two major marketplaces (Microsoft’s PCM and Amazon’s unconfirmed platform) suggests the industry is coalescing around usage-based compensation models rather than flat licensing fees. Publishers are pushing for fees that scale with how frequently AI systems rely on their content.
The View From the Beach
Amazon’s entry is particularly significant given its dominance in book retail (Kindle, APub). If the marketplace extends beyond news content to include books, academic texts, and backlist archives, Amazon could leverage its existing publisher relationships and infrastructure to achieve scale faster than Microsoft.
On the other hand, this also raises competition concerns – publishers may be wary of reinforcing Amazon’s market power in yet another vertical.
The story is developing rapidly, with both platforms in early stages. Microsoft’s PCM has named partners and a live pilot; Amazon’s remains in the briefing/slide deck phase but carries the weight of AWS’s cloud infrastructure dominance.
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.
