Amazon is prepping a Spotify-killer, the New York Post reports citing sources familiar with the matter.
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 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.
