Entertainment
It looks like Amazon is also working on a hi-fi music streaming service to compete with Tidal
Watch out Tidal, there’s a wave coming.
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Not content with having three music streaming services, Amazon is reportedly working on a high-quality streaming service to take on the likes of Tidal, according to Music Business Worldwide. With an unconfirmed subscription fee of $15 per month, the “better than CD quality” music streaming service will undercut the competition.
The real strength of any music streaming service is its library, and there’s no reason to doubt that Amazon has what it takes. With two million tracks on the ad-supported or Prime Music tiers and a whopping 50 million tracks on Prime Music Unlimited, that’s a huge record collection for Amazon to delve into.
How much of that total will be streamed in higher-fidelity is still unknown, but with an estimated launch date of later this year – we won’t have long to wait to find out.
The high-placed music industry sources that MBW heard these whispers say that Amazon is already discussing the launch with larger music rights-holders and that at least one major record company is already on-board.
Amazon is working on it as we speak: they’re currently scoping out how much catalog they can get from everyone and how they’ll ingest it
Will Amazon’s large size win out against offerings from Deezer or Tidal?
The comparable CD-quality (44.1 KHz / 16 bit) tier from Tidal is $20 per month, with the service getting more expensive the higher the bitrate served. Deezer’s offering is also $20 for the same quality, so with the reported $15 price tag for Amazon’s offering, it’s already ahead of the pack.
Once launched, Amazon will have a music streaming service for nearly everyone. That’s your “I want a radio replacement” listener in the ad-supported, played-on-Echo tier, the “I already pay for Prime” listener with Prime Music, your “I don’t know what I want to listen to each day” listener in Music Unlimited, and soon, the “I’d listen to music streaming if it wasn’t super-compressed” listener with the Hi-fi tier. Amazon has a captive audience, trust from the market, and enough money to just buy the rights to whatever back-catalogs it wants to include.
The market leaders, Spotify and Apple Music, have both resisted the push into high-fidelity music streaming. With Amazon jumping in feet-first, those other streaming services will have to get into the pool or be left behind.
What do you think? Interested in this streaming service from Amazon? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
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