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Amazon may be building a rival music service to challenge Spotify

By Koh Wanzi - on 1 Feb 2016, 11:28am

Amazon may be building a rival music service to challenge Spotify

Amazon is reportedly planning a music streaming service that will offer a lot more than its current Prime Music service. (Image Source: Amazon)

Are you a Spotify user? Is there a particular reason why you stick to it instead of making the switch to Apple Music? Either way, you may be about to get even more options to choose from as Amazon is reportedly preparing to challenge the incumbents in the music streaming game with a full-fledged service that will be even bigger than the existing Prime Music.

Prime Music currently comes bundled with Amazon’s annual US$99 Prime membership as an add-on perk, and offers on-demand and ad-free access to more than 1 million songs. But that’s still just a sliver of the over 30 million songs that Spotify and other services offer, so Prime Music was never in any real position to pose a serious challenge.

However, it looks like Amazon might be gearing up to change that with a dedicated music service that will exist apart from its Prime membership. The plan is supposedly still in the early stages, but sources say that the online retailer is currently discussing a US$9.99/month subscription fee and a US$3 to US$4 monthly discount if customers sign up for a version of the plan that comes with a bundled Echo smart speaker.

The Amazon Echo smart speaker may be bundled as part of a discount on Amazon's future music streaming service. (Image Source: Amazon)

Amazon claims to be the biggest seller of physical album copies in the US and the second-largest seller of digital music. In the words of Steve Boom, Amazon’s vice-president of digital music, “If I’m an artist and I want to reach fans of my music, and I recognize that people like to interact with music in different ways, we’re really the only place that touches all of the different formats.” That might serve as added incentive for artists to get behind a future Amazon music streaming service, or at least that’s what Amazon will be hoping for.

Reports say that a launch could come as soon as this fall, or around September. If the rumors pan out, that’s only good news for consumers as the increased competition could force existing services to sharpen their offerings further. As more major players arrive on the scene, it’s also yet another step closer toward a fuller embrace of music streaming by the mainstream.

In the meantime, we're just hoping Spotify makes up its mind on what to focus on and realizes that no one really wants to watch ESPN videos in its app

Source: New York Post via The Verge

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