Here comes Amazon.
Less than a week after the online giant launched its first fully free music streaming service, MBW has caught wind of the company’s next big plan to challenge the likes of Spotify.
We understand that Amazon is currently in discussion with various large music rights-holders regarding the upcoming launch of a high fidelity music streaming platform – and that at least one major record company has already agreed to license it.
MBW has heard this whisper from several high-placed music industry sources, who say the price of Amazon’s new tier will likely be in the region of $15 per month. It’s expected to launch before the end of 2019.
“It’s a better bit rate, better than CD quality,” said one source. “Amazon is working on it as we speak: they’re currently scoping out how much catalog they can get from everyone and how they’ll ingest it.”
The best known existing hi-def music streaming offering comes from TIDAL, whose TIDAL Hi-FI subscription tier costs $19.99 per month and offers CD-quality lossless streams at 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.
In addition, TIDAL also offers a ‘Masters’ quality offering for pickier audiophiles, which presents thousands of albums at 96 kHz / 24 bit.
“With Amazon making this move, it feels like a positive step for pricing flexibility. Spotify has just been outmaneuvered.”
Senior industry source
TIDAL’s ‘Masters’ range is made possible by its partnership with digital hi-def music company MQA. It’s understood that Amazon has not partnered with MQA for its own HD tier.
Meanwhile, Deezer offers a HiFi tier at a standard price of $19.99 per month, which, like TIDAL’s equivalent, streams music at 44.1 kHz / 16-bit via FLAC files.
The world’s two biggest music subscription streaming platforms – Spotify and Apple Music – are yet to venture into the world of high fidelity audio.
Will Amazon’s exploration of a launch in the area trigger their interest?
A further senior US-based music industry source told MBW: “Think about it: Amazon will have every tier of recorded music covered, from free streaming through to limited catalog via Prime, a full ‘Spotify rival’ in Music Unlimited and a hi-definition service – in addition to vinyl, CD, merch and more. We haven’t seen anything near what they’re capable of in music yet.”
They added: “So far, Spotify and Apple have resisted launching a higher-price streaming tier, and [the labels] have resisted giving more away for the same [$9.99 a month] price.
“With Amazon making this move, it feels like a positive step for consumer pricing flexibility, and good news for streaming ARPU generally. Spotify has just been outmaneuvered.”
The launch of Amazon’s free music service on Alexa last week introduced an entry-level tier Amazon’s music streaming ecosystem.
Amazon customers wishing to hear on-demand music without ads can upgrade to a Prime membership, which will offer them more than 2 million songs to choose from. And if an Amazon customer wants full, on-demand access to more than 50 million songs, they can sign up to Amazon Music Unlimited – for which a subscription locked to a single Echo device will cost $3.99 per month.
For access to Amazon Music Unlimited across multiple devices, customers pay a $9.99 per month subscription, although those who already pay to be Amazon Prime members only need pay an additional $7.99 per month.Music Business Worldwide
