Amazon may be the latest entrant into the streaming music business, and could be adding the feature to its $99 per year Prime service as early as next month. According to sources of BuzzFeed, Amazon has locked up deals with two of the big three music labels (Universal Music Group is on the fence) to launch a music streaming service that would be included at no extra cost with your Amazon Prime subscription. In order to keep costs down, Amazon would hand-pick artists and albums to license, rather than go all-out as we've seen with Spotify, Rdio, Beats and Google Play Music.
These limited albums would be at least six months old, the sources said, and would be based on the listening and buying habits Amazon tracks through its own music locker and MP3 sales businesses. The music service is expected to be available across multiple platforms and allow unlimited streaming of the songs that are made available. Sources claim the new service could be launched as early as June of this year.
Considering that it will be included in the (now $20 higher) Prime subscription, it may not be much of a deal breaker to see Amazon only offering a subset of the libraries that competing standalone services are offering. Amazon has a pretty good idea of what most people want to listen to, and if it can cut licensing deals on the cheap, it may work out in the end for all parties. What do you think, would you be inclined to dump your current streaming music subscription and just go with Amazon Prime's? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: BuzzFeed
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