What’s your favorite streaming service? Is it Apple Music? Or perhaps Spotify? Were you even aware of Amazon Music? Well, Amazon Music is actually growing at a staggering rate. The Rolling Stone reports Amazon Music is currently growing three times as fast as Spotify.
After launching in 2016, Amazon Music wasn’t really taken too seriously. Things quickly changed after a concert for Amazon Prime featuring stars such as Taylor Swift, SZA and Dua Lipa put them on the map. According to Financial Times, Amazon Music Unlimited grew roughly 70 percent in the last year. At a cool 32 million subscribers, it still is trailing Apple Music which is at 60 million. And Spotify is still on top at 100 million. However, it is growing at a much slower rate, at about 25 percent per year.
Why is Amazon Music Growing?
Having come late to the game, Amazon Music launched 2 years after Apple Music. But, synchronizing with their exclusive hardware such as the Amazon Echo, the speakers helped their popularity. With the hardware integration brining in more users, this helped set a foundation with their audience. Amazon Music was also able to take advantage of older subscribers as well. The head of Amazon Music, Steve Boom, said that about 14 percent of Amazon Music subscribers are 55 or older. This is a relatively high number when comparing to Spotify’s 5 percent, in the same age range. Finally, Amazon Music offers more flexibility with price. Prime members can take advantage of the service for only $8 a month, and if you limit your listening to only an Echo speaker, it’s $4.
In closing, Amazon’s integration with their hardware such as the Echo seems to drastically help their numbers, as well as these older audiences. But does this mean that Amazon Music capture younger audiences in the race to take over as the top streaming service?
