In a nutshell, Amazon is sweetening its $99 per year Prime membership by adding a free streaming music component.
The company will expand its Prime membership offerings by adding a stockpile of old and newish music for subscribers to stream on demand. The Prime music service, which is scheduled to launch this June or July, will not include recent releases but instead restrict its catalog to songs and albums that are 6 months old and older, five music industry sources familiar with the company’s plans confirmed to BuzzFeed.
Similar to Prime Instant Video, the on-demand video option available to Prime members, the Prime music service (the official name of which is still unknown) won’t aspire to the full universe of existing content, instead offering a potluck of select songs and albums it has licensed from labels at a discount. That distinguishes it from the prevailing business model of stand-alone streaming competitors like Spotify, Rdio, and Beats Music, all of which have tried to lure customers by promising all of the world’s music with a few precious exceptions.
Interesting. A logical extension of the Prime Instant Video model.
Bizarrely non-customer obsessed behavior, but rather a savvy business move thats guised as such
as a Prime customer, i really have no interest in their media buffet. i just wanted cheap shipping for stuff.
The word you’re looking isn’t “free,” it’s “bundled.” 🙂
As a Prime member since 2005 I have to say that I’m getting sick of Amazon spending my Prime membership money on things that we have neither requested nor use.
Prior to Amazon Prime I place 20 orders through Amazon. Since becoming a Prime member I have placed 488 orders. And my wife has probably placed easily another 200 orders on top of that. I have not once used the Kindle lending library or watched a streaming movie. Now, if they were just adding the movies and music at a loss in order to gain more Prime members that would be one thing. However, in the same time they have increased the One-Day shipping option price and moved some things that used to be Prime-eligible to this Add-On category.
All we’re asking is to give us what we are paying for and not use our money for your own purposes.
A bunch of crap music to go along with their crap movies and tv shows, all while raising prices. No thanks. Someone needs to step up to compete with Amazon because as of now they are a monopoly.
Yup. I’ve never used Prime Instant Video.
Likewise I suspect I will never use this new service.
I think you misunderstand.
This is not them “spending your Prime money on other stuff”.
This is them “getting more Prime customers to be more profitable”.
If Prime stops providing value worth its price, stop renewal.
So, it will be a partial library of everything I can listen to on Spotify today, but not for another six months, buried underneath Amazon’s awful music search & sort system that prioritizes 50 cover versions of the song I actually want to hear? GENIUS!
—A Prime subscriber and even a Prime Instant Video fan