Amazon Has Launched Their Own Music Streaming Service

If you’re a member of Amazon Prime — Amazon’s $99/year service that offers members free 2-day shipping on everything — you’ve already got their new Prime Music service, an unlimited streaming subscription along the lines of Spotify, Beats, Rdio, Google Play, etc.

But this service is not quite like the others. Metal Insider has a concise wrap-up of what the service offers, but here are the bullet points:

• For the most part, only albums and songs 6 months old or more will be available on the service.
• You will be able to download tracks for free as well, but those will disappear if you cancel your Prime subscription.
• Only two of the three major labels have signed on: Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. Universal Music Group, which contains Republic, Interscope, Capitol and many, many more, is holding out.
• Many independent labels are holding out as well due to payment terms that favor the majors (more info on this at Billboard)

Here’s what this feels like to me: a play to get more music fans into the Amazon ecosystem to spend money on other things on the site. Prime already has approximately 10 million subscribers; how many will be interested in using this new service is unclear. But the ability to have unlimited streaming music AND free 2-day shipping on everything you could ever want (Amazon has EVERYTHING) for just $99/year is a really good deal that could attract new customers, and it’s cheaper than Spotify or Beats.

If Amazon can reach deals with the remaining labels and open up access to new releases they’ll really have a killer package, but for now I don’t see very many music fans making Prime their music streaming service of choice.

Does anyone out there have a Prime membership that can tell us what the new music service is like? Share in the comments.