Amazon’s streaming music and video services currently fall under its Prime membership: people who pay $99-a-year for free shipping also get digital content as part of that subscription. Now it seems Amazon is planning to break out of that paywall, initially with video. The New York Post claims that the company is planning to launch a separate streaming video service that will be supported by advertising, although it’s more of a Netflix/Hulu than a YouTube – in other words, TV rather than shortform videos. “Although it will be separate from Prime, the ad-supported service is ultimately a bid by Amazon to lure people to eventually pay up for Prime membership,” claimed the article, which quotes industry sources as suggesting that Amazon currently has around 25m users of Prime Video. Our take: if Amazon finds success with an ad-supported video service, might it also extend the idea to music? Although given the current industry chatter about ad-supported on-demand music, Amazon may be better served by biding its time on that score.
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