Online retail giant Amazon unveiled on Wednesday the introduction of Amazon Music Unlimited, a full-catalog streaming service designed to compete in an already-packed marketplace led by Spotify and Apple Music.

The service will be offered through a tiered pricing system that undercuts its competition, in the process further disrupting the market.

Specifically, said Amazon, subscribers of its Amazon Prime program can get the full service for $7.99 per month (or $79 per year), and Prime members who own the popular Echo hands-free speaker unit can subscribe for $3.99 per month.

At that latter price, the service will deliver the same millions of songs as its competition, but will do so for $6 a month less than the industry-standard $9.99 charged by Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal and others.

Amazon will offer its service at that same $9.99-per-month price for non-Prime members.

The news comes during what promises to be an active period for streaming platforms. In addition to Amazon’s announcement, online radio giant Pandora, which counts about 78 million users for its free platform, has confirmed that it will begin offering an on-demand service before the end of 2016.

Advertisement

In addition, speculation rose over the summer that German streaming site Soundcloud was seeking suitors, and that Jay-Z’s Tidal service was in talks with Apple. No deals have been struck, however, and the companies have declined to confirm negotiations.

Amazon’s initiative isn’t its first foray into music streaming. Prime subscribers already have access to a limited selection of approximately 2 million songs.

But the company is betting that it can draw subscribers by tempting them with an Echo, and have designed Amazon Music Unlimited to communicate seamlessly with that device.

For example, rather than searching the millions of songs, users can ask Echo’s Alexa voice control system to play a playlist based on mood or genre. Through voice commands, it can recommend new songs, find and play tracks based on lyrics and respond to general commands, such as “play music.”


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.