Ad free music unleashed by ecommerce giant.Launched overnight, Amazon’s Prime Music has over one million songs and Playlists. It is ad-free, unlimited and can be listened to offline.
It is available in the US only for now and is free to Amazon Prime members which includes the ecommerce giant’s other content TV, movie streaming and eBooks for US$99.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, said, “We removed interruptions. Don’t worry about having your music constantly disrupted by ads… you won’t hear any.
“Choose exactly what song to listen to, repeat your favorite song over and over again, or download music to your phone or tablet to listen offline.”
Prime Music includes music from artists like Daft Punk, P!nk, Bruno Mars, Blake Shelton, The Lumineers, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna.
However, over 1 million songs in the Prime Music catalogue is not a big selection, when you look at the likes of Spotify which has 20 million songs and other rival streaming services, which are already well established and with much larger libraries.
Amazon was unable to come to an agreement with Universal Music Group – one of the largest music labels – whose artists which include Miley Cyrus, Kanye and Katy Perry, all of whom will not be playing on Prime Music.
As Slate.com writes:
“If you were hoping for a Spotify-killer, you can put that out of your head right now.
“The biggest problem is the puny selection. A million songs might sound like a lot, but it’s a small fraction of the number offered by rival services like Spotify, Beats Music.”
Amazon is also believed to be launching a smartphone next week.
