Amazon has announced a big milestone for its music-streaming business: more than 55 million users.
“The streaming service has reached more than 55 million customers globally, with subscriptions to Amazon Music Unlimited growing by more than 50% last year alone,” claimed Amazon in its announcement.
In an accompanying interview with the Financial Times, music boss Steve Boom stressed that “nearly all” of the 55 million users are paying for a subscription, with only a small minority on the free, ad-supported tier that Amazon launched in the US last year.
“Amazon Music has grown nearly 50% year-over-year across the US, UK, Germany, and Japan and has more than doubled in our newer countries such as France, Italy, Spain, and Mexico,” continued the announcement.
Last year, the FT reported that Amazon had more than 32 million music-streaming subscribers in April 2019. That suggests that since then, Amazon has been adding nearly 2.6 million net new users a month.
Spotify had 248 million monthly active users including 113 million paying subscribers, at the end of September 2019. Apple Music’s last public figure was 60 million subscribers, in late June 2019. It’s almost certainly past the 70 million mark now.
Amazon currently has a wide range of streaming tiers, starting with free and ad-supported, rising through its Prime Music tier, which is bundled with a Prime membership; its single-device Echo subscription; its standard Amazon Music Unlimited service; a family plan for that; and the hi-res Amazon Music HD tier.
“Amazon doesn’t talk numbers that much. We felt like getting to this level of scale was something worth talking about,” Boom told the FT.
Amazon also remains the leader in the market for smart speakers. According to research firm Canalys, it shipped 10.4m Echos in the third quarter of 2019 alone, giving it a 36.6% share of the global market.
Amazon’s streaming clout was also recently shown when Ellie Goulding’s single ‘River’, which was exclusive to Amazon and heavily promoted through its playlists and Alexa recommendations, topped the official singles chart in the UK.
“As we continue to lead in our investment in voice with Alexa, and in high-quality audio with Amazon Music HD, we’re excited to bring our customers and the music industry even more innovation in 2020 and beyond,” said Boom today.
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