Amazon’s paid music service is coming earlier than expected…
According to new reports, Amazon is preparing to launch their much-anticipated music streaming subscription service. Back in January, DMN reported Amazon’s preliminary talks about launching a potential streaming service. But, now these plans are more concrete and the service could be launched as early as this fall.
Amazon currently claims to be the biggest seller of physical music in the US, and the second-best seller of digital music, so this move into music streaming makes sense. The success of the Amazon Echo will have also been a driver for the company to branch into paid music streaming. Amazon Echo has been integrated with streaming services like Amazon Music, Prime Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio and others. But, also Spotify’s service was rolled into the Echo in February this year, bringing its 30 million songs with it.
The move into paid music subscription will place Amazon at the front-and-centre of the music streaming wars, between Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and others. The service will be priced at $9.99 per month which puts the subscription price in line with the other platforms. The reports suggest that the company is in the process of finalising licensing deals with the labels which will be wrapped up very soon, meaning users will be able to sign up to the service before the end of the year.
Amazon will be entering a crowded market – the question is, is it too late?
Well, they are definitely late on this one, but then again people said Apple Music was late, but they grabbed their portion of the music streaming market quickly. With Amazon being as large as they transition into the music streaming market will most likely be smooth and successful.
One things for sure, it will definitely take some time to catch up to Spotify’s 30 million paying subscribers and Apple Music’s 13 million users. But, if the company experiences a growth rate anywhere near as quick as Apple Music did after launch, it may well be in the top 3 music streaming services before we know it.
(Image by Canonicalized, Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic, cc by 2.0)
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