Amazon: Game of Drones

As expected, Amazon’s music streaming service, Prime Music, has launched in the US with a whimper rather than a bang. As reported on Buzzfeed, the service will be rolled into an Amazon Prime membership and will only feature music released more than six months ago. There are also no deals in place with artists signed to Universal Music and various other labels. The Universal roster includes huge artists including Kanye West, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift.

Prime Music claims to have over a million songs in its catalogue, alongside playlists curated by Amazon’s “Music Experts”. These include the horrifically titled ‘Boss, Not Bossy’ featuring female singers and the cringe worthy ‘Beards & Baristas: Indie Beats’.

According to The Verge, Amazon’s VP of Digital Music Steve Boom has explained that they are only offering older albums because “today’s pop often doesn’t hold much staying power”.

This not only makes it sound like a streaming service designed by your Grandad but is also unlikely to endear Amazon to labels and artists- especially given that their current treatment of independent book publishers somewhat mirrors the situation currently raging back and forth between independent labels and YouTube.

None of which matters to Amazon– Far from a would be Spotify slayer, this is a tagged on, diluted music streaming platform bundled in with Prime to give the impression of better value to the overall offering, much like their video streaming service- some free content as a hook for paying for even faster drone delivery.