Amazon to Launch Streaming Service This Week?

The constantly growing streaming service market is about to get another big player. As The New York Times points out, Amazon is looking to join the likes of Spotify, Google, and Beats, launching its own streaming service as soon as this week. The service will be available to Amazon Prime subscribers, who pay $99 per year. Aside from the annual subscription fee, there are no other costs involved for the consumer. Prime offers free shipping and streams of films and television shows, and eBooks. However, it won’t have “most new releases.” Only Sony and Warner Music have confirmed deals with Amazon — Universal Music Group has not. Licensing negotiations with record labels and music publishers began roughly six months ago. The process, however, turned out to be a slow one as the music labels initially considered Amazon’s financial offer too low. The company had allegedly set aside $25 million to pay big labels/distributors and $5 million to pay small labels. According to the Times, “Amazon’s scale may help it reach the millions of casual music consumers who so far have remained hesitant to sign up for any streaming service.” Feel free to share your thoughts on this in the comment section below.