Amazon Launches Free New Streaming Service, But It’s Limited To Alexa Users Only
The news surfaced last week in a Billboard article that Amazon’s free-tier music platform was just around the corner. In the report, the Amazon official stated:
“We initially offered to pay some record labels per stream, regardless of how much advertising Amazon sells.”
This service will be a free alternative for people who have an Echo but do not have a Prime membership or a subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited.
Before the rollout Echo owners had two choices if they wanted to stream music directly through Amazon. The first option was to pay for annual membership to Amazon Prime. This granted access to Prime Music, a catalog of 2 million songs. The second option was to pay a monthly fee of $3.99 to stream from Amazon Music Unlimited.
The new service will give Echo owners a way to enjoy free music from their Amazon device without having to turn to a free third-party provider, such as Spotify or Pandora. It will also work as a strategy to push Echo owners to upgrade to the paid subscription services Amazon offers, such as
Unlimited Amazon Music or Amazon Prime itself.
Launching a free streaming platform that integrates with Alexa is exactly what Amazon needs to compete with the current number one free streaming platform, Spotify.
Do you have an Echo and want to be a pioneer of this service? Learn more and sign up- here.
Spotify seems to respond to Amazon’s release with news of their own. Check out this One EDM article for all the details surrounding the announcement and Amazon cruise.
