Amazon Comes for Spotify With Cheaper Music Subscriptions

By Christina Warren

Amazon has just launched its long-awaited Spotify competitor, Amazon Music Unlimited. Like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Google Play, and Deezer, Amazon Music Unlimited offers on-demand access to tens of millions of songs. And like those services, it also offers “thousands” of “hand curated playlists” and personalized stations.

So why would anyone want Amazon Music Unlimited? If you’re an Amazon Prime member, it might come down to price.

Amazon Music Unlimited will cost $9.99 a month—standard fare for streaming services—but Prime members can get it for $7.99 a month or $79.99 a year. If you do the yearly option, that comes out to $6.58 a month.

Amazon also says it will be doing a family plan—similar to what Spotify, Google, and Apple offer—for up to six people for $14.99 a month or $150 a year. Again, this is the same price that the other services sell family plans for, but the yearly pricing does save you some coin.

Aside from price, the differentiator for Amazon Music Unlimited is its integration with the Amazon Echo. The Amazon Music integration does some cool stuff.

  • Say “Alex, play [Artist Name]” and get a playlist of that artist’s most popular songs
  • Request the latest song by your favorite musician by saying, “Alex, play [Artist’s] new song”
  • Play songs based on lyrics. Say, “Alexa, play the song that goes [insert lyrics]” to play that tune stuck in your head.
  • Request popular music from different decades or years
  • Request happy music or music for a dinner party or other occasions
  • Just say, “Alexa, play music” to get personalized tunes

Read the full article on Gizmodo.

And check out Zuora’s guide on Amazon’s international growth strategies – Going Global: Lessons from Amazon!

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