This past week saw the launch of Amazon’s foray into an unlimited music streaming service to rival Apple Music and Spotify — it’s called “Amazon Music Unlimited” (AMU). It’s designed to add more value to Echo users offering “tens of millions of songs and thousands of hand-curated playlists and personalized stations” according to Amazon. It’s effectively an upgrade from Amazon’s Prime Music offering. Prime is now the basic service, Unlimited is the full one. This is a really strategic move for Amazon — and what I love most is how it’s tied into an integrated approach for consumers who use devices like Amazon Echo and the Fire Stick for the TV. Amazon has borrowed a move from the Apple playbook as it relates to creating an integrated ecosystem around the customer experience between intelligent, interactive software and devices — both for the home and that can be enjoyed on the go. For those of us music/tech pioneers who have been at it for a couple of decades now, myself included, our predictions around the “celestial jukebox” have become a reality — and this is yet another example — though we were off in terms of how long consumer adoption would take. If you ARE an active user of Amazon services like Prime Video and have some of the devices I just referenced, this will be a terrific enhancement to your existing experience. The big question is how many consumers will switch over to AMU from Apple Music and Spotify, and how big a slice of the streaming music pie Amazon will enjoy accordingly. Time will tell!
What do you think of Amazon’s entry into the music streaming service? Be sure to leave a comment!
~Kelli
