Amazon is prepping a Spotify-killer, music sources tell The Post.
The e-commerce giant has held meetings in the past few weeks to discuss licensing tunes for a full-blown subscription music service that would ape streaming music market leaders Spotify and Apple Music, several sources confirmed.
The plan, still at an early stage, is the latest attempt by Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos to become the premier distributor of entertainment content from books to TV and movies to music.
Amazon executives have been filling the proverbial cart this week with multimillion-dollar movie acquisitions at the Sundance Film Festival for its streaming video service.
Amazon is also prepping the company’s first-ever Super Bowl commercial, a $5 million spot starring Alec Baldwin, to promote its latest gadget, Echo, a speaker that responds to voice commands.
Amazon currently offers about 1 million songs to customers of its $99-per-year Prime shopping service. The planned stand-alone music streaming service would come with its own monthly fee.
Prime Music’s free offerings this week include such chart toppers as Panic! At the Disco and the Beatles, as well as playlists for yoga and warm-up sessions.
Amazon’s vice president of digital music, Steve Boom, is spearheading plans for the subscription service, sources said.
It will feature a much more robust music selection than is now available via Prime.
Amazon claims to be the biggest seller of physical music in the US and the No. 2 seller of digital music.
But like its rival Apple, Amazon is seeing an industry-wide decline in the digital track download business.
‘[I]f I’m an artist and I want to reach fans of my music … we’re really the only place that touches all of the different formats.’
- Steve Boom, Amazon vice president of digital music
Artists might want to get behind Amazon’s planned streaming music efforts because “if I’m an artist and I want to reach fans of my music, and I recognize that people like to interact with music in different ways, we’re really the only place that touches all of the different formats,” Boom told Billboard in October.
Amazon is currently discussing a $9.99-per-month fee for its planned streaming service, sources tell The Post, although a discount $3- to $4-a-month price if bundled with Echo is also under consideration.
The company is prepping for a fall launch, one source told The Post.
“The music industry wants to see all the tech giants fighting it out to try and really take streaming to the mainstream,” one music industry insider said.
Amazon reports fourth-quarter results on Thursday.
E-commerce sales in the past 12 months were $71.8 billion, up 5.6 percent on the prior period, according to an eMarketer note out Wednesday.
Walmart is in second place with just $13.5 billion.
The measurement firm suggests Amazon’s video service will count 73.2 million subscribers by the end of the year.
Amazon didn’t immediately return a call for comment.