SAN FRANCISCO: Amazon.com Inc launched a streaming music service on Thursday that comes free with its $99-a-year Prime membership programme, but offers a smaller selection of recent hits than rivals Spotify and Apple Inc's Beats Music.
The new feature, dubbed " Prime Music," allows subscribers of the $99-a-year program to stream or download more than a million songs without added fees or interruptions from advertisements.
This is one of many steps Amazon has taken in recent months to broaden the appeal of Prime, which includes perks such as free two-day shipping, after increasing its price to $99 from $79.
But the selection on Amazon's streaming service is less robust than Spotify and Beats, which both offer more than 20 million songs. Amazon will also have fewer new songs and will not include songs from Universal Music Group Inc's catalog, which includes work from artists Kanye West and Lady Gaga.
Amazon's head of digital music, Steve Boom, acknowledged those shortcomings, but added that because the service is free with Prime, it offers more bang per buck than standalone streaming services that can cost $10 a month.
"If there are a few tracks you want to buy, the cost of doing that in our store will be dramatically less than paying $120 a year for, frankly, a lot of music people don't listen to," Boom said in an interview.
Amazon's own data shows that a "substantial" por ..
"If there are a few tracks you want to buy, the cost of doing that in our store will be dramatically less than paying $120 a year for, frankly, a lot of music people don't listen to," Boom said in an interview.
Amazon's own data shows that a "substantial" por ..
Will Amazon's Local Services Marketplace Kill Yelp And Angie's List?
When the news broke on Tuesday that Amazon wants to make a push into local services and launch a marketplace that will connect local businesses with consumers needing anything from a plumber to a babysitter, shares of Yelp and Angie's List immediately turned downward. The investor reaction made sense: local services — and, specifically, reviews of those local services — are Yelp and Angie’s List’s bread and butter, and if the giant that slayed the bookstore industry is now taking aim at them, who knows how robust their futures are? The good news on Wednesday, however, is that according to two different analysts, Yelp and Angie actually have a chance at surviving in a showdown against Jeff Bezos’behemoth.
In two separate notes released Wednesday, analysts defended Yelp and Angie, saying that the growth they are poised to achieve could cushion them in the event Amazon invades their turf.
“While we suspect Amazon could become a primary destination for local search given the company’s reach and scale, we also fully expect Yelp to maintain a differentiated content lead and thus believe consumers will continue to come to Yelp to augment their search. Said differently, we expect Yelp content to continue to grow, expect consumers to continue to seek out and engage with Yelp content, and as a result we expect local businesses to continue to support their Yelp page and advertise with Yelp,” wrote SunTrust analyst Robert Peck.
Read more at
No comments:
Post a Comment