Andre Yoskowitz
31 May 2014 11:59
According to a new report, Amazon is preparing to get into the streaming music business, adding such an offering to its Prime service that costs $99 per year and offers free streaming movies and TV and free 2-day shipping on millions of items.
The service could launch as early as next month, and will include millions of catalog tracks and newer tracks, as well, as long as they were not released in the last six months.
On that front, Amazon will not be able to compete with market leader Spotify, or newcomers like Beats Music, but that is not the point. The company just raised the price of Prime from $79 to $99 and adding free music will certainly sweeten the pot for those that were on the fence about keeping the service.
Reportedly, Amazon has deals in place with Sony Music and Warner Music and is working on Universal Music. It also has deals in place with prominent indies.
The labels' entire back catalogs will not be available to Amazon, but Amazon will get to choose what to offer, with the sources saying they will likely choose what has been popular on Amazon MP3 and via their retail CD sales to have better cross-selling capability.
Source:
BuzzFeed