Amazon to release free, ad-supported version of Amazon Prime Music: Report

According to reports, the e-commerce giant Amazon may be planning to introduce a free version of Amazon Prime Music supported by advertisements. Amazon could be in talks with music labels to come up with the ad-supported version of Prime Music soon.

Although we are seeking more clarity over the company’s strategy, a report has it that Amazon is likely to provide users with free music streaming experience through the company’s Echo range of smart speakers. However, the ad-supported, free version of Prime Music is said to offer a limited catalogue of music. 

As of now, Amazon Music streaming service is part of Amazon Prime subscription, which costs Rs 129 for a month or Rs 999 for a year. Meaning, Amazon Music service is only limited to Prime subscriber and right now, Amazon Music is not based on a freemium business model. As a result, there is no free version of Amazon Prime Music available up until now.

As per the report, Amazon has agreed to pay some record labels per stream and the ad-supported, free music streaming platform is likely to become available in the U.S. as early as next week.

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However, it remains to be seen how it will affect the on-going competition with the likes of Spotify, which boasts of 207 million users including the paid ones. Apple Music, on the other hand, has about 56 million paid subscribers, which is proportional to the number of iPhone units Apple manage to sell every year.

Amazon is yet to comment on this development.  More details are awaited whether Amazon is planning to introduce this service to India.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Amazon workers can listen to what users have to say to Amazon’s digital voice assistant Alexa, which goes into tens of millions of Echo devices around the globe. The team put to this particular task of listening to your conversations is a mixture of human contractors and full-time employees.

Amazon is reportedly looking for a better human-level understanding of random phrases you utter at times and annotate certain interactions.