Amazon recently launched a music streaming service called Amazon Prime Music. It comes as part and parcel of the Amazon Prime membership and while its a great addition to the perks provided to Prime members, the lack of song selection was a turnoff for many users. Amazon is working to fix that and it has taken a major step in that direction by adding “hundreds of thousands” of songs to the Amazon Prime Music catalog.
The tracks that have been newly added are from artists that are now available on Prime Music for the first time as well as from artists that have already been available on the service. Amazon pointed out some big names in the announcement which include David Guetta, Shakira, Linkin Park, Kendrick Lamar, Ella Fitzgerald, Skrillex and many more.
These are the artists that users of a streaming music service would expect to be on the catalog. However Amazon is still missing out on some pretty big names like Kanye West, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga because it is yet to sign a licensing deal with Universal, one of the biggest record labels in the industry.
Amazon Prime Music still has a long way to go before it can really take on rivals like Spotify, which has a 20 million strong music catalog. At launch Prime Music had over one million songs available and it certainly needs major expansion down the road to be able to truly take on its competitors.