Amazon has brought for its customers in the US a new free music service. The music can be listened to on Echo home speakers and other Alexa-enabled devices. But the service will have advertisements in them. Amazon Music has already carved out a market for itself in direct competition with other music streaming operators like Apple Music and Spotify. But this new service is different from its main offering where it is a subscription paid and there are over 50 million songs and after paying the monthly fee of $9.99, the customers can pick and choose the songs they wish to hear.
The free service now being offered to the Echo speaker users and other devices with Alexa in them has curated playlists and the number of songs here are just 2 million. The only options they may get are to choose the station and the genre. It must still be a large collection and if you don’t mind the ads and the fixed sequence of the songs, you may like this option. Amazon is hoping that the customers who sign on for the free service will eventually upgrade to the paid one. Some could be lured into the Prime subscription too.
Amazon’s free service therefore takes on Spotify which too is a free music streaming service. While both suffer from the kind of base that a company like Apple enjoys with millions of iPhone and other iOS devices users, Amazon is able to tap the users of its voice assistant Alexa whether on the Echo home speakers or other devices. Spotify is an independent service.
Amazon may, in future, look to expand this offering and make the music available on multiple platforms. As indicated only US customers get to avail this free service for now.