In e-commerce and cloud computing, Amazon leads the market by a large margin. Only with music streaming it doesn’t work so well. A new offering now should help catch up.
Amazon is making a new attempt to catch up with market leaders Spotify and Apple Music in the music streaming market. In the future, customers of the Prime subscription offer will be able to listen to the entire music catalog of approximately 100 million songs without commercial breaks. The company announced it on Tuesday in Seattle and Munich. So far, Prime subscribers have only been served by a pool of 2 million songs.
Unlike the paid offer “Amazon Music Unlimited”, which costs just under ten euros a month more, Prime customers cannot freely choose from the entire catalog, but can only listen to the songs in random mode. However, they can skip songs indefinitely and create up to 15 playlists. Amazon is also expanding its range of radio broadcasts and podcasts.
Targeted paid access
In its free ad-funded version, Spotify, the streaming market leader, offers access to around 80 million songs and podcasts, even in shuffle mode. If you want to access individual songs or download songs, you need to subscribe to a premium subscription, which costs just under ten euros a month. Apple doesn’t have a free, ad-funded version, but a subscription for just under $ 10 a month. For half the price, the iPhone company also has “Apple Music Voice” in its range, with which you can control music exclusively via voice commands on Apple devices.
The new Amazon offering should also serve to retain Prime subscribers after a significant price increase. In Germany, Prime costs just under 90 euros a year from September instead of the previous 69 euros.
Prime is an important customer loyalty tool for Amazon. Subscriber customers get free shipping from Amazon and participating retailers on the platform, even without a minimum order value, and can also access streaming video and music, among other things. In February, Amazon announced a price increase from $ 119 (approximately € 116) to $ 139 (€ 136) for annual payments in its U.S. home market.
