Amazon to take on Apple Music and Spotify with its own streaming music service

According to a report published on Friday, Amazon is about to challenge music streamers Spotify and Apple Music with a service that will be priced competitively, and offer a similarly diverse music catalog for users to choose from. Apple Music gives new subscribers a one time three-month free trial. After that, the service costs $9.99 a month for individuals ($4.99 a month for students) and $14.99 for a family with up to six members.

Spotify also charges $9.99 a month for its premium service. But roughly 70% of its subscribers use the ad supported free tier, which is a level of service that Apple does not offer. Spotify, at last count, has over 100 million free and paying subscribers which makes it the top music streamer globally. David Pakman, a partner at Venture Capital firm Venrock, says that he would expect a streaming music service from Amazon to take customers away from Apple, but not Spotify.

Speculation about Amazon's new streaming music service calls for it to charge $9.99 a month. Currently, members of its Prime shipping and video service are entitled to listen to a free music streaming service called Prime Music, which has a limited catalog of one million tunes. Apple and Spotify's music libraries are estimated to contain 30 million songs each. Current Prime Music members are able to listen to streaming music via the Amazon Music with Prime Music app available in the App Store.

Amazon's new music streaming service is expected to launch in late summer or early fall, with the company presently in negotiations with record labels.

source: Reuters