Alexa Users Gets Ad-supported Music Streaming for Free
Though the rumours of Amazon rolling out an ad-supported streaming music service was making rounds till the last week, it was not final that when the company will launch the said service. Amazon, on Thursday, confirmed that all the company’s Echo products will now be streaming the ad-supported music service for free.
The Echo-devices will now be able to play music from the top playlists of Amazon Music Unlimited, and the user does not have to be an Amazon Prime or Amazon Music Unlimited member. Baing ad-supported, the music streaming service, from Amazon, will play smaller ads in between the songs in random time intervals.
Earlier, the users needed to subscribe for the Prime membership to use the music streaming service bundled to it, or they could buy a separate plan to use Amazon Music Unlimited, by paying a monthly $3.99 fee to use on an Echo device and $9.99 fee to use the service on a non-echo device.
Noticeably, the company has announced the news on the same day Google launched the ad-supported free YouTube Music streaming on Google Home smart devices. Also, Amazon has directly challenged its another rival, Spotify, that was the only music streaming service to provide free as well as paid service to its users.
Amazon, along with its ad-supported music streaming service has introduced referral deals to its subscribers, to get more users to buy its Alexa-powered family of Echo, other smart home devices, and its Prime membership. The music streaming service included in the free membership includes over 2 million songs in different languages, and the paid subscription plan of the same service has a library of over 50 million songs. Noticeably, last year, Amazon’s music streaming service alone had tens of millions of active subscribers, and the company sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices last year.
Having a music streaming service for free from the same company, as the smart speaker belongs to, is a better choice for every Echo speaker owner, as they do not have to pay extra money for a music streaming service from other company to play on those devices. Also, this is quite a move by the company to increase the sales of its smart speakers over smart speakers from its rival companies.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.