Amazon is reportedly in talks to launch a free, ad-supported music service, which would directly compete with Spotify, Pandora and YouTube (owned by Google).
But Amazon may be taking a different approach to “free” listening — and it will involve asking Alexa. Reports suggest that you'll only able to listen to Amazon's music service through Echo-connect speakers.
For clarity, Amazon already has a music steaming service — Amazon Music — which it launched way back in 2007. Launching a free music service that exclusively plays through Echo speakers would really be more of a retail play, in that you'd have to own an Echo device to use it.
Spotify is currently the only major streaming music subscription service with a free tier, and YouTube has always been free to use. As such, this new format from Amazon might appeal to folks who currently listen to music on YouTube — it would be a similar listening experience (one with ads) but without a screen.
It's rumored that Amazon could launch this service as early as this week. In the meantime, here's a few other products to shake up your music listening:
AirBuddy makes it easy to listen to music with your AirPods on the Mac 👂
Playlist Shuffle creates Amazing playlists with an AI bot 🎵
Tidal for Amazon Echo is...exactly what you think it is 🔊
Roadtrip is kind of like running your own radio station 📻
Generative.fm is endlessly ambient music 😌
Flow State is two hours of free music for working, every day 🙌
And of course there's a whole slew of apps that help you find new music.
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