Amber Neely
The all-new Amazon Music DJ Mode experience will boast personalized, hosted stations featuring top DJs, featured artists, and music experts.
On Thursday, Amazon announced that it is launching a "brand new, on-demand listening experience," dubbed "DJ Mode," a service similar to the stations found on Apple Music's stations, including Apple Music One.
The service will combine aspects of streaming music and live radio, allowing users to tune in whenever convenient to hear DJ-curated music, artist interviews, and feature insight from music experts.
The first artist-led DJ Mode will be hosted by Billie Eilish, who will introduce her favorite songs and stories behind her new album, "Happier than Ever."
Listeners in the U.S. can tune in today to check out DJ-hosted hip-hop, country, and pop music stations. They'll be able to hear music insights from industry experts, drop-ins from popular artists, and hear music facts and trivia from Alexa.
Amazon suggests that users try out Alexa voice commands, such as "Alexa, play All Hits in DJ Mode" or "Alexa, play The Billie Eilish Takeover" to try out the new service.
The service comes bundled as part of Amazon Music Unlimited, which costs $7.99 per month or $79 annually for Amazon Prime members. Non-Prime customers can subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited for $9.99 a month.
The service is a rival to Apple's own streaming radio stations like Apple Music 1 and those found on Apple Radio. Apple's foray into streaming radio began in 2015 with the launch of Beats 1 but has expanded and rebranded in recent years to include Apple Music 1 (formerly Beats 1), Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country.
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2 Comments
Apple really F’d up.
They had YEARS to build their stations and the competition had nothing. Rebranding Beats 1 removed the coolness of Beats and changed the name to an unnecessarily long jumble of words on top of causing confusion.
The name Beats along with the name Apple made for a one-two punch that NO ONE could beat. Apple could have kept Beats 1 for the Hip-Hop/Top 40 crowd and a new Apple Music 1 for everyone else. This would have fixed everyone’s complaints about Beats 1 being to Hip-Hop heavy, now Apple Music 1 solves NOTHING and causes more problems. Apple could have then expanded to Talk Radio, Electronic and Spanish (extremely popular this side of the world).
Apple Music DOES have Hits and Country which were good calls. But damn, 3 stations in 5 years? From the world’s richest company?
If Apple just added ONE station a year they could have had
Year 1. Beats 1
Year 2. Apple Music 1
Year 3. Country
Year 4. Talk Radio
Year 5. Spanish
And Amazon got Billie Ellish...
*Facepalm at Apple*