Senior label types tell us that rock and country artists skew far higher on Amazon’s platform in the US than elsewhere – surely good news for those who fear such genres are destined for marginalization as hip-hop, EDM and pop dominate global streaming charts. What’s more, for the music business, Amazon Music Unlimited – and its symbiotic relationship with Echo/Alexa – is defining itself rather differently to Spotify and Apple Music. “Echo was installed in around 6% of US homes by the end of last year, less than 18 months after it arrived on shelves.”Įcho was therefore installed in around 6% of US homes by the end of last year, less than 18 months after it arrived on shelves. Such accessibility has made Echo a smash hit: in January, CIRP estimated that over 8m units of the device had been sold in the US since its public launch in July 2015. The Echo, and its voice-assistant Alexa, is Amazon’s not-so-secret weapon against the likes of Apple Music and Spotify – and has been designed to put even the most technologically inept consumer at ease.Īsk Alexa to ‘play the song that goes “drinking fast and then we talk slow”‘, for example, and she will instantly oblige with Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You.
That same service will cost non-Prime members $9.99-per-month, while a budget $3.99-a-month offering will get you all the music… locked to a single Amazon Echo speaker. Prime Members can pay an additional $7.99-a-month (or $79 a year) to gain access to Amazon Music Unlimited – a full on-demand service with 30m+ tracks, including the odd major exclusive (notably the Garth Brooks catalogue). These Prime subscribers – who pay an annual fee for speedier delivery of goods and other perks – automatically gain access to (and therefore technically become customers of) Prime Music, the ad-free, limited-catalogue tier of Amazon’s music streaming offering. that claim relies on a bit of a technicality.īased on Amazon’s $6.4bn revenue in 2016 from ‘retail subscription services’, the latest estimates suggest that the company has around 65m Prime members worldwide. Did you know that Amazon owns the world’s biggest paid-for music streaming service?Ĭards on the table.
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