Amazon Prime Music Takes Another Baby Step

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know that I've been saying all along to watch out for Amazon Prime Music as the next big disrupter in the streaming music space.

Why? Prime Music is part of the popular Amazon Prime subscription service that already has a reported 75 million subscribers (although Amazon isn't saying just how many). Amazon is also dabbling in its own record label, and is generally getting into the mainstream music distribution waters one toe at a time.

Well, maybe two toes, as the company recently dropped a few new nuggets of what might come next.

First of all, T-Mobile must added Amazon Music to its data-free music streaming program called Music Freedom. This is the first instance of Prime Music being available to off-the-platform users.

What might be more an indicator of the future is the fact that Amazon just made it's Prime Video service available as a stand-alone product for $9 a month. For $11 a month you could also buy the full Amazon Prime membership complete with Amazon Prime Music and 2 day shipping (which is more expensive than just paying the $99 a year fee for the same thing).

Although this last move has little to do directly with Prime Music, it's another baby step in the direction that we inevitably know Amazon will take. Don't be surprised if there's a big announcement about a free-standing Prime Music service in the next few months.

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T-Mobile Adds More Music Services

T-Mobile is doing its best to win new customers using music as the incentive with its Music Freedom initiative, a plan where music streams don't count as data against a customer's data limits. In fact, the company recently said that customers have streamed nearly 7,000 terabytes of music, which amounts to around 5,000 songs a day since the service was launched a few months ago.

Music Freedom customers already had access to Pandora, Spotify, iHeart Radio, iTunesRadio, Rhapsody, Samsung's Milk and Slacker, which probably have the biggest market share in the space, but it's now adding Google's Songza, Rdio, AccuRadio, Black Planet, Grooveshark, and Paradise.

Interestingly, it didn't add Google Play Music, which turned out to be the #1 most requested platform by its users. T-Mobile ran a survey and after more than 750,000 votes, that was the service that came out on top, yet it's the only one that hasn't been implemented yet.

It's yet to be seen if Music Freedom will add the extra jolt that that T-Mobile really needs to compete with its much larger competition, but its great to see music as such a large part of its new direction.

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T-Mobile Jumps Ahead Of The Music Curve, And No One Noticed

Thanks to the latest Net Neutrality ruling by the FCC in May, the companies that control the digital pipes can that we all use now can begin to charge content providers for providing their customers with higher speed pipelines. 

AT&T’s new Sponsored Data Service is a good example, where content distributors pay for the privilege of their customers having no data restrictions so they’re able to consume more product without having their speed capped or charged extra. Of course, in the end this means that the end user will ultimately be penalized, since they’ll either have their data service throttled down by their provider if they breach their data limit, or charged a higher price by a music service to cover the cost of the sponsored service.

Last week T-Mobile launched their Music Freedom service that flies in the face of that idea though, as it provides no data limit for consumers accessing a number of major streaming services, including Pandora, iHeart Radio, iTunes Radio, Spotify, Slacker and Milk Music. This means that a T-Mobile subscriber can listen to an unlimited amount of music from these services without the fear of going over a monthly data limit.

Of interest is the fact that a number of music services weren’t included, at least in the initial announcement, the largest being Google Play All Access. This could ultimately be a distinct disadvantage for services not in the plan (especially smaller services without the deep pockets to make them competitive), but it’s not entirely clear if any of the services left out will be added as time goes on.

Studies have found that as much as 77% of all music streaming is done via smartphones, so it’s possible that whatever service provider offers the best mobile music deal will also get the most subscribers in the end. That’s why T-Mobile is out ahead of the curve with Music Freedom, while its competitors seem to look at the music part of their offerings as just another feature. Read more on Forbes.

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