Amazon Reportedly Launching Budget Streaming Music Service For Echo Speakers
Amazon is currently working on a new music services similar in concept to what Spotify offers. The company has plans for a $10 a month subscription that would play all the music a customer wants to stream, wherever they want to stream. The second plan would stream the same music, but would cost half the price and only work on Amazon Echo.
Amazon plans to launch the services in September, however, it is still working on licensing deals with record companies and publishers. It is unclear whether the cheaper service will cost $4 or $5 USD. The company already offers an Amazon Music subscription to Amazon Prime customers, but the service has a limited variety of music. Pandora is also reportedly planning on launching their own $5 service sometime this year.
According to some, Amazon’s cheaper service would oppose the standard music industry approach over the last few years, which has largely focused on smartphone users. The majority of Spotify users sign-up for the service on their phones and Apple Music focused most of its attention on smartphone users. Other companies have launched $5 subscriptions in the past, but these were largely limited to web radio.
The Echo has gone through a number of major updates in the last year. The Echo can now enable any of the 1,400 skills that “Alexa” has learned since launch. Some of her most recent acquired skills include being able to lock a user’s house doors with voice command and having remote access to Hyundai’s luxury vehicles.
Amazon has already sold a million units since its launch. The company hopes to sell another three million by the end of this year and ten million by the end of 2017. We recently featured the Echo in our back-to-school guide and you can check out our own review of the Echo here.
