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Amazon signs up Universal to Prime

By | Published on Wednesday 30 September 2015

Amazon Prime

So, Amazon may have started rolling out Prime Music beyond the US earlier this summer, but Universal still isn’t signed up to the streaming music service. Well, it wasn’t at the start of that sentence. It will be by the end of this sentence. Big things are happening as I type these words.

Yes, Universal Music has followed Sony Music and Warner Music in signing up to Amazon’s streaming music play, the other two majors have been there from US launch in June 2014.

As previously reported, Amazon’s streaming music service, which is made available as part of the online retailer’s wider Prime set-up, offers a much smaller library of tracks than the likes of Spotify et al, with mainly catalogue releases, though there’s still a million odd songs to choose from. But by not promising “all the music all the time”, it was easier for Amazon to get away with not having any content from the world’s biggest record company.

Universal is, now, however on board, though the major seemed keen to stress it was only making “a selection” of its catalogue available, and that won’t include brand new releases. Even though we already know that’s the deal with Amazon Prime Music.

With music being just one of many services Amazon Prime users have access to, and with Prime subscriptions actually costing less than a Spotify subscription, there is a lot less money for the labels with this particular streaming set-up. Though Amazon argues that its limited catalogue platform attracts consumers who would never sign up to a standalone $10 a month streaming service.



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