'Amazon' Plans To Dominate Music Hosting With Cheaper Service, Echo Player-Exclusive

Amazon has slowly been carving real estate in areas other than retail such as its cloud services and its contribution to the Internet of Things industry called the “Echo” device. Now, the online retail giant is expanding to a subscription-based music service that is about half as cheap as its competitors and will only be available on its “Echo” music player.

According to Recode, industry resources state that Amazon is currently in the works to finalize deals with music developers as well as industry publishers. If all goes well, the service could be launched as early as September. One of the only wrinkles left to polish is the matter of the subscription fee, which is currently hovering between $4 and $5 a month.

As to how the arrangement would work, sources indicate that it would function much like Spotify where users will be able to play whatever music they want. However, the cheaper rate will come with the usual fare of ads. For those who want true unlimited, ad-free music streaming with the ability to play music offline, the service will also come with a more expensive $10 monthly subscription fee.

On the matter of exclusivity, however, Amazon’s approach is considered counterintuitive. By limiting the service to only “Echo” hardware, which is by their very nature not portable, the company is removing one of the features that make music streaming services so popular.

Customers want to listen to music on the go, Apple Insider notes, which can cast a bad light on what would otherwise have been an appealing prospect by Amazon.  It’s possible that the merchant giant is mainly targeting family or home-use demographics, which will only need their music once they are at home or during events. Even so, this severely limits the market that the company can tap into unless it starts producing portable music players of its own.