Amazon is launching its Prime Music streaming service in the UK, in a move that will see it aim to undercut Spotify and Apple Music.
The service is bundled as a free add-on to Amazon’s Prime delivery service, which also includes books, movies and photo-storage services as “value added” extras.
Prime Music comes to the UK after launching in the US in June, where Amazon claims to have more users than Tidal, Deezer, Rdio, Rhapsody and Google Play combined, but not Spotify which has 60 million users worldwide. It forms part of Amazon’s attempt to cement its Prime service within people’s lives and so encourage shopping on its online store.
However, the music service is not quite on a par with rivals such as Spotify and Apple Music as it gives users access to only 1m tracks. Apple’s service has 30m tracks and Spotify’s library is greater than 30m.
“We’re not trying to go head to head with Spotify or Apple,” said Steve Bernstein, director of Amazon’s digital music services in Europe. “We’re trying to be the only one to offer all forms of music from discs, downloads and streaming, all in one place.”
Instead of competing on a level playing field with Spotify and others, Amazon is attempting to undercut rivals. The service will automatically be available for anyone who has Amazon Prime, which costs £79 a year, and has been designed with the budget conscious in mind.
“We have lots of customers for which spending £120 a year on a music subscription service is too much,” said Paul Firth head of music for Amazon UK. “The best music streaming service is the one you already have.”
Prime Music will be available through smartphone apps for Android and iOS, as well as through the browser and Amazon’s Fire tablets and smartphone. Users will be able to stream tracks and playlists, download them for offline playback and keep playing them for up to 30 days without connecting to the internet.
As with its US counterpart, the streaming service will be heavily reliant on playlists, but its library differs from the US, based on data gleaned from music purchases and listening habits of UK users.
Users who bought MP3s or CDs through Amazon will also have access to the tracks through a “my library” section of the Amazon Music app. Personal and subscription libraries will be separated, avoiding users’ personal music libraries getting swallowed by the subscription service as is the case with Google’s and Apple’s music services.
Amazon’s Prime service is growing at over 50% year-on-year, spurred by the store’s increased shipping costs. Prime Music will be another add-on for customers to justify spending £79 a year that Amazon hopes will continue Prime’s growth and lock more people into its ecosystem.
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