Amazon adds music streaming to Prime membership

“HUMBLED” by the response from Australian customers, Amazon is adding a new perk to draw people in to its $6.99-a-month Prime service.

AMAZON is continuing to beef-up its Prime membership offering with the addition of a “hand-curated” music streaming service featuring more than two million songs.

The e-commerce giant’s full streaming service, Amazon Music Unlimited, is already available to Australian customers for around $12 a month, boasting some 50 million tracks compared with roughly 30 million on Spotify.

Amazon Prime Music, launching today for all Prime members at no additional cost, features a smaller subset of the wider library. It adds music to free shipping, e-book reading, movie, TV and video game streaming already available to members of the flagship $7-a-month Prime service that launched in June.

While slightly cheaper than the US version, it also offers a smaller range of benefits, just as the Amazon Australia store offers a smaller product range — something Amazon is keen to rectify.

“The level of value you get for $6.99 per month — $4.99 at the moment — has been built out pretty significantly,” said Amazon’s local head of music David Ray. “It’s two million tracks, it’s hundreds of hand-curated stations and playlists based on any form of mood or interest or genre or artist, it’s offline download.”

Amazon partnered with local artists to create an exclusive launch playlist called “Made in Australia”, featuring covers of classic songs including Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Straight to You covered by Gang of Youths and AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds covered by Amyl and the Sniffers.

“That’s exclusive to Amazon and it’s also exclusively on Prime Music. Those tracks aren’t available on the radio, they’re just with us,” Mr Ray said.

Amazon doesn’t break down local numbers but has 100 million Prime subscribers globally. The company is emphasising Alexa and Echo voice integration as the key point of difference, likening it to listening to music with a friend.

“Most importantly it’s curated through Alexa,” Mr Ray said. “It’s about mood. ‘Alexa, play me sad songs, play me happy songs, play me dance songs from the ‘80s.’”

Amazon is adding music streaming to its Prime membership.

Due to the family-based nature of the device, one of the most popular genres on the streaming service is children’s music. “One of the great side effects we’ve seen with Echo is with families buying them so much, there’s the joy the kids are getting interacting and asking questions,” he said.

“Music is one of the reasons people get the device and start using it on a regular basis, and what we’ve seen is that kids’ artists really over-index. They’ll walk into a room and ask for a track, and they’ll play it again, and again, and again.”

Jamil Ghani, vice president of Prime International, said Australia was “definitely one of the fastest out-of-the-gate launches that we’ve had”.

“We’ve been incredibly humbled by the strength of the response we’ve received from Australian shoppers,” he said.

“The growth of the program has been brisk since June. It’s the most robust set of benefits we’ve had in any launch on day one and obviously we’re doubling down with further investments across shipping, shopping and entertainment.”

Mr Ghani said customers “tend to join for the shipping but we like to say they stay for the entertainment”.

“For me Prime Music is an exciting addition to the portfolio, we see that as one of the benefits that most customers engage with globally, and I expect that will be no different in Australia,” he said.

It comes a day after Amazon announced it was taking the fight to Coles and Woolworths with the addition of its Pantry Food and Drinks category.

Amazon’s launch in December last year was widely seen as underwhelming — documents filed with the corporate regulator revealed a net loss of $9 million last calendar year — but the retailer has slowly but surely built out its product range.

Earlier this year, Amazon announced it would stop shipping to Australia from its US store as of July 1 in response to the federal government’s online GST changes.

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