Image Source: Amazon

The music streaming industry has long been dominated by the three companies Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. Since its creation, Amazon Prime Music was only available for use by the companies Prime members. In a move that many media researchers believe is to step up the game against Spotify and Apple, Amazon is now offering its music streaming service for free to anyone (none-prime members) who download the application on IOS/Android devices, Fire TV, and online.

Of course like its competitors, the free download and use of the music streaming service comes with advertisements in order to continue to listen to music.  The service will be available to anyone in the U.S., U.K. and Germany and offers the same 2-million song catalog as Prime Music, with the exception of Prime Music being ad-free for users that are subscription members to the companies services.

Interestingly enough, Spotify’s stock price dropped almost 5% following Amazon’s announcement of their free music streaming service intended to take in more users to compete against Spotify’s astonishing 140 million users a month.

“Expansion of the free-with-ads Amazon service will expose more consumers to Amazon’s music, who can then be promoted to join Prime to get the ad-free Amazon Music free — or to upgrade to Amazon’s more premium music services” (Lukovitz).

With the addition of the add-supported Amazon Music service to its lineup, the company now offers four different versions of music streaming with Prime Music, Amazon Music Unlimited (50 million song catalog) and Amazon Music HD which features its largest catalog and quality music streaming.

Many believe this expansion of the free-with-ads service will expose more people to Amazon, which in turn will lead to the promotion of these consumers to become a prime member for ad-free music or maybe even taking it a step further to the Unlimited or HD service.

I believe that the music streaming service is only becoming more popular with many of these media giants targeting their members with subscription based services in order to gain revenue and customer loyalty which is essential in today’s digital world. All three of these leading music streaming services constantly are looking for an upper hand to their competitors, and Amazon appears to have just moved towards leveling the playing field.

Sources:

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/343552/amazon-opens-up-availability-of-free-music-streami.html

https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/19/amazon-makes-its-music-streaming-service-free-with-ads/