Amazon now offers cut-price music
- by Minnie Bishop
- in Research
- — Oct 17, 2016
Earlier this week, Amazon unveiled its all-new Spotify rival in the US - "Amazon Music Unlimited" - complete with two subscription packages that bested its rivals on price.
The online retail giant this week debuted Amazon Music Unlimited, its service meant to compete with Spotify and Apple Music.
Amazon Prime members will now get a discount on Amazon Music Unlimited, too.
"The recorded music industry has been fumbling for a digital business model that really works, and I think streaming has come into its own", said eMarketer analyst Paul Verna.
As for the $7.99-a-month tier?
Amazon "needs to incentivize potential Echo owners as much as it can", he told TechNewsWorld.
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Recode first reported that Amazon has effectively agreed to cover an extra $2 per user at this price point, which has since been verified by MBW's industry sources.
Running the service on multiple devices, including the Echo and Tap family, will cost $8 a month for Amazon Prime members and $10 a month for others.
MERRY JANE readers who want to try Amazon's Music Unlimited can try it now with a free 30-day trial through their website.
That's a wafer-thin margin agreed before admin, marketing and staff costs - let alone tax. With the launch of Amazon Music Unlimited, Prime members who want even more music have access to a catalogue of tens of millions of songs and thousands of hand-curated playlists and personalised stations at a breakthrough Prime member price of $7.99/month or $79/year (which equals only $6.58/month). Music Unlimited can also engage the user through Alexa. Amazon Music Unlimited is created to be a direct competitor to Apple Music and Spotify, offering users the opportunity to get curated tracks, listen to playlists and more.
Adding more and more benefits is a play both to keep existing Prime subscribers loyal and to convert other Amazon customers into Prime subscribers. Spotify is the leader with 40 million subscribers, followed by Apple with 17 million.
The Amazon streaming music service is available for Android, iOS, Sonos and desktop users. That's the biggest year-to-year increase since the late 1990s, when music fans were buying so many CDs they were routinely using them as coasters and tiny, shiny dinner plates at parties. The company's new Music apps have been entirely recreated and overhauled.
