Amazon Pairs Its Speaker With Streaming Music, at a Bargain Price - The New York Times

Also see Amazon’s full on-demand streaming music service launches today (The Verge), which concludes "According to [vice president of Amazon Music Steve] Boom, this is just the first iteration of Amazon’s take on an on-demand music service, and there’s plenty more to come in the future."

"The cost of Amazon’s new service may have even more impact. The standard price for Music Unlimited is $10 a month, the same as Spotify, Apple Music and most others. For members of Amazon’s Prime program — which costs $99 a year and brings perks like free shipping and access to online videos — it will cost an additional $8 a month, or $79 a year, a discount that itself represents a triumph of negotiation, since a year ago the major record labels balked at Apple’s wanting to charge less than $10 for Apple Music.

But for customers who own an Echo device, Amazon will offer the service at just $4 a month, deeply undercutting its competitors. That price comes with a restriction: The service can be used on a single Echo device and nowhere else, like a phone or a computer. But the price is far lower than has ever been charged for what is essentially a complete catalog of music online — except for outlets like YouTube and Spotify’s free version, which charge nothing but have advertising."

Amazon Pairs Its Speaker With Streaming Music, at a Bargain Price - The New York Times