Usually when Music Ally reports on Amazon’s financial results, we add in a sentence noting that the company hasn’t disclosed any useful numbers for its music services. This time round, the reason is different: the company already disclosed some earlier in the month, when it revealed that it now has more than 55 million Amazon Music [streaming] customers globally.
Its latest quarterly financials reiterated that, and the details around it. “Collectively, in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan, Amazon Music customers have grown nearly 50% year-over-year; and in newer marketplaces France, Italy, Spain, and Mexico, Amazon Music customers more than doubled in 2019,” explained Amazon’s press release. “Additionally, Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers grew more than 50% in 2019.”
What about the financials? For the full year 2019, Amazon’s net sales grew by 20% year-on-year to $280.5bn, while the company recorded a net profit for the year of $11.6bn, up from $10.1bn in 2018. Amazon’s revenue from ‘subscription services’ was $19.2bn in 2019, meanwhile, with its fourth-quarter total of $5.2bn representing 32% year-on-year growth. Amazon Music is included in that category, but so are Prime memberships, audiobooks, videos and other subscriptions charged by Amazon.
Talking of Prime, though, that was the big new figure revealed by Amazon in its announcement. “More people joined Prime this quarter than ever before, and we now have over 150 million paid Prime members around the world,” said CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement. That’s up from the 100m figure that Bezos announced in April 2018, which means that Amazon has been adding around 2.5 million net new Prime members a month since then. As we’ve noted before, this is a powerful funnel for the company’s music-streaming services.
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