Amazon was once known as an online retailer interested in selling food, books, electronics, clothing, and other varied needs, but Jeff Bezos’s company wants to be more these days. Amazon’s branched out to add its cloud service, created its own Kindle and then Kindle Fire tablet lineups, and, finally, its own smartphone (called the Amazon Fire phone). This isn’t to say that Amazon’s been all that successful at every venture, but the online retailer is popular enough to get its customer base to trust it in all the right areas.
The company brought its Prime Music service to the United States last year, in an effort to create an Internet streaming competitor, but Amazon has now decided to extend its Prime Music service to UK citizens in the hopes of taking on giants like Pandora and Spotify internationally.
Amazon’s Prime Music service allows current Prime members to access internet music at no additional cost outside of the annual prime membership (in the UK, this comes out to £79 for Prime), which makes Prime Music an enticing offer for a Prime customer who’s already hooked to Amazon’s video and shopping services, to say the least. “We know, through having spent 15 years selling music to people, that there are a lot of customers who really love music but for whom £120 a year is a lot of money, so to be able to offer them that music streaming service as part of a £79-a-year package, along with all those other benefits, that offers great value to our customers,” said Amazon Music UK head Paul Firth.
Sure, it could be the case that Amazon wants to do something nice for its Prime customers; but the Prime service itself seems rather pricy at £79 a year. Apple Music and Spotify are both £120 a year, which comes out to an additional £41 a year for each of those music-streaming services as opposed to Amazon’s Prime Music service, but Amazon Prime wants to trap you into a subscription you may or may not want.
Prime Music is perfect for Prime customers, but for those who already own an iOS or Android device, you may find Apple Music, Google’s Play Music and YouTube Music, as well as Samsung’s Milk Music to be far better alternatives considering that you’re already using Apple, Google, and Samsung services anyway. Amazon’s Prime Music is only a deal if you’re taking advantage of all Amazon’s services, not just Prime Music or just Prime shipping, for instance.
The Prime Music service does include one feature akin to premium radio streaming services that may catch your attention, however: it features an offline playback feature that lets you download music and play it offline. If you’re a UK Prime subscriber, that wants to take advantage of your free music-streaming service, head on over to Amazon’s Prime Music page today.
