Amazon Plugs Ecosystem Hole with Streaming Music Service

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Apple Music, Spotify, say hello to Amazon Music Unlimited. Amazon just launched its own streaming music service, and here’s the kicker: It doesn’t need to be better than Apple Music or Spotify, just more convenient. That’s enough to keep more people in Amazon’s ecosystem.

Amazon Music Unlimited offers an extensive music catalog, just like Apple Music and Spotify. A monthly subscription will set you back US$9.99 a month, unless you’re an Amazon Prime member, and then you’ll pay $7.99. If you own an Amazon Echo, Amazon Dot, or Amazon Tap, that price drops down to $3.99 a month.

The pricing structure is clearly favoring customers who are already buying into Amazon’s ecosystem, and that’s exactly the point. The company’s streaming music service is yet another carrot to draw in more Prime subscribers and keep more people thinking about Amazon first when it’s time to spend money on other products and services.

If you’re an Echo user, or soon to be Dot user, it’s a cheap way to get into music streaming—and you can tell the device what to play by saying things like, “Alexa, play classic rock.”

Aside from the super cheap price for Echo and Dot users, there’s one feature that sets AMU apart from other streaming music services: convenience. If you’re already in Amazon’s ecosystem, adding their streaming music service gives you one less reason to leave.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s Apple’s modus operandi, too. Apple ships every Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV with built-in Apple Music support, and that convenience factor has helped boost the company’s streaming music service.

For Amazon, that convenience could be AMU’s killer feature. It doesn’t need to have the most songs, the best exclusives, or the highest audio quality. It just needs to be good enough and convenient enough to catch the attention of potential subscribers and pull them deeper into Amazon’s ecosystem.

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