Amazon now fastest-growing music service, outpacing Apple & Spotify

Driven by inexpensive Alexa products, Amazon is adding customers at a faster rate than either Spotify or Apple Music — but still has a long way to go to catch up.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Amazon has quietly outpaced subscriber additions versus its more well-known competitors. A report by the Financial Times claims that Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers have grown by about 70% in the last year.

While the rate of growth is higher than that of Apple or Spotify's offerings, it still lags behind in total subscribers. In April, Amazon had about 32 million subscribers to all of its music services including both Unlimited and the free Amazon Prime Music tier, that accompanies an Amazon Prime subscription.

On June 27, Apple's Eddy Cue was clear about Apple Music's subscriber base. The executive said that Apple Music had exceeded 60 million paid subscribers, five months after it had hit 50 million nearly four years after launch.

Spotify broke 100 million subscribers in April after seven years of availability.

It isn't clear if the Financial Times subscriber numbers include trial subscriptions to the premium services.

Amazon Music Unlimited costs $7.99 a month for Prime subscribers, and $9.99 a month for non-subscribers. Amazon Prime Music contains a smaller subset of the music available on Amazon Music Unlimited, is free to Amazon Prime subscribers, and is included in reported figures from Amazon and in the Financial Times report.

Apple Music costs $9.99, with a family plan for multiple users available for $14.99 a month — the same as the family plan for Amazon Music Unlimited. Spotify has a free tier, and Spotify Premium sells for $9.99 a month.

35 Comments

entropys 4316 comments · 13 Years

About 5 years ago

I am an amazon prime member but I have never used amazon music. Am I counted?

seanismorris 1624 comments · 8 Years

No surprise Amazon Music is growing fast, they’re using the printer/ink model, except the ink is a subscription. Amazon must be taking a bath on the hardware... they’ll probably be sued for antitrust violations.

fastasleep 6451 comments · 14 Years

seanismorris said:

No surprise Amazon Music is growing fast, they’re using the printer/ink model, except the ink is a subscription. Amazon must be taking a bath on the hardware... they’ll probably be sued for antitrust violations.

... what hardware?

NotMuch-You? 18 comments · 5 Years

fastasleep said:

... what hardware?

"Driven by inexpensive Alexa products, Amazon is adding customers at a faster rate than either Spotify or Apple Music —but still has a long way to go to catch up."

gatorguy 24627 comments · 13 Years

entropys said:

I am an amazon prime member but I have never used amazon music. Am I counted?

No, not unless you subscribe to it.

From the article since you missed reading it:
"Amazon Music Unlimited costs $7.99 a month for Prime subscribers"

EDIT: I've not ever used it either, but also a Prime member. So I clicked my Prime account, clicked Amazon Music at the top, and was taken to a free trial that becomes $7.99/month after the intro period. Still not an Amazon Prime Music subscriber. ;)

Common sense would say it couldn't be counting every Prime subscriber. At last count there were over 100 million of them.