On Tuesday, news arrived of Amazon’s latest attempt to win the battle between streaming media platforms. With Amazon Music HD, the company now has a hi-definition tier which will offer millions upon millions of songs at CD or better audio quality.
Per CNN’s report, Amazon said it will have over 50 million songs available at CD quality and “millions more” at a quality superior to that. Their new Amazon Music HD subscription tier will go live for $12.99 a month for Prime members and $14.99 a month for non-Prime members. The goal is to rival and compete with the likes of Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal.
Amazon’s on-demand music service first launched back in 2016. The purpose was to offer more content options as part of Prime, or as a way to get more customers to join their Prime membership service. They include some music availability for Prime members, but newer content is part of a separate music subscription plan called Amazon Music Unlimited. That costs $7.99 per month for Prime members and $9.99 a month for non-Prime members. Subscribers are able to use a variety of Amazon devices such as Echos, Fire TV devices, and more to listen to the streaming music.
Apple Music has been making strides within the streaming music platform space. They tend to feature exclusive new music on release day, along with Beats 1 radio, curated playlists, and their Connect feature which is a social media area for artists. The Apple Music service costs $9.99 a month, with a discount for college students making it $4.99 a month. A family subscription costs $14.99 a month.
Spotify is considered the current leader in terms of streaming music platforms and overall music catalog. While they offer a free ad-supported version of the platform, their monthly subscription plan is $9.99 for Spotify Premium. It allows for listening to new music, creating playlists, and supports download for offline listening via mobile phones. Students get a half-price discount, bringing Spotify Premium to just $4.99 a month.
Tidal also costs $9.99 a month for their streaming music service which offers standard sound quality. They also offer Tidal HiFi at $19.99 a month. According to the TIDAL website, the HiFi plan boasts “lossless High Fidelity sound quality,” as well as high definition music videos. Tidal also has various discounts for families, students, and military members.
Until Tuesday’s Amazon news, Tidal offered the best available sound quality option of the various streaming music services. However, Amazon’s new HD tier at a lower price seems like it could be bringing some serious competition at them.
As of the close of Wall Street trading on Sept. 17, Amazon (AMZN) stock was at a price of $1822.55, up by $14.71 or 0.81 percent.
