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Amazon will be launching a music streaming service offered free to customers paying for its $99/year Amazon Prime service. The service will launch in June or July according to a new report from Buzzfeed.
The news follows yesterday's acquisition of Beats Music by Apple, and a report from February that claimed Amazon was investigating the possibility of a music service to accompany Prime.
Amazon's streaming catalog will only include songs older than six months, likely saving the company on royalty costs. Spotify, Beats and Rdio all offer new releases to their subscribers.
The company will expand its Prime membership offerings by adding a stockpile of old and newish music for subscribers to stream on demand. The Prime music service, which is scheduled to launch this June or July, will not include recent releases but instead restrict its catalog to songs and albums that are 6 months old and older, five music industry sources familiar with the company’s plans confirmed to BuzzFeed.
Amazon has some 20 million paying Prime members and offers them a library of movie and TV shows via its Netflix-esque Prime Instant Video service along with free 2-day shipping on most items the company sells.
Recently, Amazon signed a deal with HBO to stream older original content from the cable network to Prime subscribers.
Top Rated Comments
Cue the Apple fanboys saying Amazon is trying to get a jump on Apple/Beats.
Cue the member saying "Cue the Apple fanboys"
person A: "Hey, Man. Are you listening to the new album on Spotify?"
person B: "No, I have to wait until the middle of next year."
This makes Amazon Prime an even better deal. What a brilliant idea. Although I like being able to try out new music right away, most of the music I listen to tends to be >6mo anyway since I'm always playing catch up to music.
Not really for the music junkies maybe but a great deal for those who casually want to listen to music.
I only know of 1 album I have an interest in listening to that was released within 6 months, and I own it.
I think this is a great step in the right direction.
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new people like Imagine Dragons
Speaking of played to death...
...
I can live with that.