It seems that everyone wants to get in on the music streaming business these days, but is it that surprising? A study earlier in the year found that digital sales actually dropped for the first time since the launch of iTunes back in 2003, suggesting that consumers were starting to lose interest in purchasing songs individually, but would rather stream them.
We have services like Pandora, Rdio, and Spotify that have been around for a while, but then Apple recently got into the game with iTunes Radio, followed by Beats Music, and now according to a report by Re/code, it looks like Amazon wants to get in on the action as well.
According to Re/code’s sources, they claim that Amazon is currently in talks with the music labels and attempting to negotiate some kind of licensing deal that would give them the rights to stream music. However the deal is far from done as Amazon is apparently asking for too big a discount, more than what the labels have given to other music streaming services.
The talks have apparently been going on for months and assuming that everything goes according to plan, this music streaming service could be offered up to Amazon Prime subscribers. As it stands, Prime subscribers have access to a video streaming service called Amazon Instant Video, but with the addition of a music streaming service, it might entice customers to pay a higher subscription fee.
It certainly sounds like Amazon wants to do everything, from being a retailer, to offering up tablets and possibly even smartphones, e-books and e-book readers, video streaming services like Netflix, and apparently music streaming as well. Could they be stretching themselves too thin? What do you guys make of an Amazon-run music streaming service?
Filed in . Read more about Amazon.