Whenever we talk here about the current situation of the streaming musical, we comment on how it is basically split between two players: an undisputed winner, the Spotify, and a tireless deputy leader, the Apple music. From a global perspective, however, a third wheel is spinning faster and faster.
A report recently published by the Financial times showed that yes Spotify and Apple Music remain on top of the world of streaming, but the Amazon Music Unlimited It is growing faster than the two main competitors so that if the current pace holds for the next few years, Ma's platform could lose its runner-up by 2021.
Through 2018, Amazon's music service grew by 70% in number of paying users; Apple Music, meanwhile, has an estimated growth rate of 50% per annum, while Spotify has grown by 25% over 2018. In absolute numbers, of course, the situation is reversed: Spotify is over 100%. millions of paying users, against 60 million from Apple Music (April numbers) and 32 million from Amazon.
It's worth noting that this 32 million count takes into account not only Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers, but also users of Amazon Prime Music, a reduced catalog service that is offered free to all Amazon Prime subscribers.
According to the analysis of Financial timesAmazon's masterpiece move was to stick to its (extremely popular) service line of smart speakers Echo and its Amazon Prime service. Music Unlimited costs US $ 10 per month, the same as Apple Music; the price, however, drops to $ 8 if the user is an Amazon Prime subscriber and drops further to $ 4 if the subscriber wants to listen to music only on their Echo devices.
Amazon is also succeeding with a higher age range than its competitors: Jeff Bezos's music service has 14% of its subscribers 55 and older, while Spotify has only 5% of its users in that range. That is, the retail giant's strategy may not be exactly to co-opt users from rival platforms, but to appeal to audiences that traditionally are not closely tied to streaming.
Be interesting to see the result of all this as Amazon Music Unlimited expands to more markets like Brazil, for example.
via Cult of Mac
