SEATTLE _ Amazon.com has invested big bucks in making access to a streaming library of original series and movies an alluring feature of its Prime loyalty program, which tends to turn members into devoted Amazon shoppers.
As a side effect of that spending binge, Amazon is becoming a cultural powerhouse. That power was bolstered on Tuesday when "Manchester by the Sea," a Kenneth Lonergan picture Amazon acquired last year at Sundance, snagged a best-picture nomination at the Academy Awards.
It's a first in that category for Amazon, which beat video streaming rival Netflix to the punch. In total, the movie got six Oscar nominations.
Amazon has already made a name for itself with TV series such as "Transparent," which earned Golden Globes for best actor and best series.
But the best-picture nomination at the Oscars rewards a bid launched in 2015 by Amazon Studios, the company's content unit, to produce or acquire original movies that would debut in theaters before showing up on the company's Netflix-like video streaming service.
The first release to come out of that strategy was "Chi-Raq," by Spike Lee. Another high-profile investment was Woody Allen's comedy, "Cafe Society." Amazon paid $10 million for "Manchester by the Sea" as the film was making waves at Sundance.
Amazon has been ramping up its spending in both video and music content, as well as in the technology underlying wide distribution to millions of subscribers. In the second half of last year Amazon doubled how much it spent on video content versus the same period of 2015, chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said in an earnings call last year.
While Olsavsky didn't specify the amount, it's clear that it's a lot of money, as Amazon had previously disclosed that in 2014 it spent $1.3 billion on the video streaming service.
All that investment is geared to making Prime subscriptions, which cost $99 a year and offer shipping privileges and other perks, more valuable. Analysts estimate that about half of U.S. households are Prime members.
"These shows are great for customers, and they feed the Prime flywheel _ Prime members who watch Prime Video are more likely to convert from a free trial to a paid membership, and more likely to renew their annual subscriptions," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote in a letter to shareholders last year.
