{"id":2443204,"date":"2019-04-19T12:31:38","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T18:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=824734"},"modified":"2019-04-19T12:31:38","modified_gmt":"2019-04-19T18:31:38","slug":"amazon-music-is-available-for-free-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/amazon-music-is-available-for-free-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Music Is Available for Free Now"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Amazon<\/a>\u2019s free music-streaming service has launched in the U.S. \u2014 but the tech giant is making anything but a big deal out of it. The ad-supported free service quietly became available this week exclusively through Alexa, Amazon\u2019s voice assistant programmed into Echo devices, indicating that Amazon is more interested in promoting its own software\/hardware ecosystem than being an aggressive competitor to Spotify\u2019s free music tier.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the launch of Amazon Music, customers have been able to use the simplicity and magic of voice to request music in fun, innovative ways,\u201d the company wrote in a blog post<\/a> Thursday, emphasizing the ties between music and voice discovery. \u201cAnd so, beginning today, customers in the U.S. who do not yet have a Prime membership or a subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited will now be able to listen to an ad-supported selection of top playlists and stations for free with Amazon Music on compatible Alexa-enabled devices.\u201d<\/p>\n

When rumors begin swirling a few days ago of an imminent free music tier from Jeff Bezos\u2019s tech juggernaut, many speculated that the crowded music-streaming market was about to see a major new rival, and Spotify\u2019s stock price even dipped<\/a> as a result. But the modest, Alexa-only launch of the service \u2014 which lacks even a branded name of its own \u2014 positions it only as a driver of Echo sales and advertising income.<\/p>\n

Midia Research analyst Mark Mulligan wrote in a blog post that this type of new product aligns with Amazon\u2019s rising ambitions in the tech ad revenue space. \u201cWhile Spotify investors were right to get twitchy at the Amazon rumors, it is Facebook investors who should be paying the closest attention,\u201d Mulligan said, pointing to the fact that Amazon has grown its advertising business from $2.9 billion to $10.1 billion in two years. (Facebook brought in $50 billion in 2018.)<\/p>\n

MarketWatch analyst Russ Crupnick told Variety<\/em> that<\/a> he doesn\u2019t see Amazon\u2019s new free tier \u201cchanging anything major\u201d in the music ecosystem. \u201cIt will probably have little impact on the established players \u2014 Spotify has incredible loyalty with its listeners and I don\u2019t see people marching off to Amazon because it\u2019s going to have a free tier,\u201d Crupnick said. \u201cAmazon has a much more casual audience \u2014 it\u2019s large, but they spend much fewer hours [on the platform] and are generally less engaged with music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside of the new Alexa-only free service, Amazon offers premium, ad-free music via both Amazon Music, which is included as part of $119-a-year Prime membership and offers 2 million songs, and Amazon Music Unlimited, which costs $7.99 a month and offers 50 million songs.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazon\u2019s free music-streaming service has launched in the U.S. \u2014 but the tech giant is making anything but a big deal out of it. The ad-supported free service quietly became available this week exclusively through Alexa, Amazon\u2019s voice assistant programmed into Echo devices, indicating that Amazon is more interested in promoting its own software\/hardware ecosystem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2443204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 15:40:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2443204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2443204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2443204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2443204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}