Amazon is negotiating with the music industry to offer a less expensive music subscription service, Recode reports — but don’t set aside that Lincoln just yet. The half-priced subscription option, which could launch in September, will be available only to Amazon Echo users. Amazon is already close to launching a standalone music streaming subscription service at $10-a-month, similar to Spotify or Apple Music.
Conceptually, the commercial-free streaming service on the Amazon Echo would launch at a price point between $4 to $5. In order to stream music, an Amazon customer would need to purchase the Amazon Echo, the Amazon Tap or the Echo Dot. Hypothetically, users will be able to ask Alexa to play any song that’s available among the artists and albums listed on the new subscription service. It’s likely this new service could be set as the default option on Echo devices, similar to Spotify or Pandora.
The Echo Dot would be particularly ideal for integrating this streaming service into a standalone home stereo or a whole-home audio system. Since that $90 device utilizes a speaker system in order to operate most effectively, users would be able to listen to unlimited streaming music on their home stereo for $60 less per year than competing services.
Amazon already offers a streaming service to Amazon Prime users as an additional perk. Also accessible on Amazon Echo devices, Prime Music offers roughly one million songs for streaming. Of course, that’s significantly smaller than services like Spotify which offer about 30 million songs.
Hoping to sell roughly three million Echo devices this year, Amazon has set a target of ten million Echo devices for 2017. Due to recent sale activity on Prime Day as well as aggressive discounts from several major retailers this month, it’s possible that Amazon will debut another generation of Echo devices prior to the holiday shopping season. Amazon is also expected to see more competition to the Echo this year with the upcoming launch of Google Home during the last half of 2016.
