Amazon is gearing up to rival Spotify by unveiling their own free to use, ad-funded music streaming platform.
Amazon currently offers Amazon Music; a pay to use streaming platform which Amazon Prime members can use to listen to their favourite tracks both on and offline. Amazon Music is also fully integrated with Amazon’s many Alexa voice integrated products such as the Echo speaker.
Amazon’s new plans will allow users to listen to a limited selection of music for free without paying a monthly subscription but will face usage restrictions and advertisements; much like Spotify’s current free to use model.
Amazon is yet to comment on their plans but inside sources predict that the new free to use model will arrive as early as next week.
The news comes as Spotify and Apple Music battle each other over claims that Apple is sabotaging its competition. Spotify released a campaign against Apple which accused the tech giant of unfair treatment. Spotify said, “Apple has also routinely rejected and delayed upgrades and enhancements to the Spotify app that we develop to improve functionality and our customers’ experience — and intentionally does so at business critical moments for us. Importantly, they put none of these roadblocks in front of their own music service.”
Apple responded directly to Spotify and said,”Spotify wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem, but now they’re leveraging their scale to avoid contributing to maintaining that ecosystem for the next generation of app entrepreneurs. We think that’s wrong.” They also said that the company “wants all the benefits of a free app without being free.”
As we keep you updated on changes in the music streaming world, click here to read about Spotify’s latest conflict with songwriters.