Amazon Music might soon be free for users as streaming wars continue in India

• Amazon has plans to launch Prime Music for free in India.
  
• Most of the primary players in the music streaming space offer a free ad-supported version of their service.
  
• Free Prime Music is also good news for Echo and Alexa users who will no longer need to depend on third party apps for free music.

Prices are being slashed across the board in the music streaming space as the Indian music mobile app market is getting increasingly competitive.

Amazon Prime, which includes both Prime Video and Prime Music, reportedly has plans to launch a free music streaming service as soon as next week according to Billboard.

Most music services in India — Apple Music, YouTube Music, Spotify, JioSaavn, Gaana, Wynk, Hungama, and Google Play Music — offer a free version of their app which is usually supported by ads, doesn’t include the option of listening to songs offline, and, in YouTube Music’s case, doesn’t run in the background.

But, Amazon has no such free option with a monthly subscription of ₹129 or an annual fees of ₹999.

The move to make Amazon Prime Music free in India isn’t only beneficial for the music streaming service but also for the Amazon echo system which includes Amazon Echo devices and Alexa enabled smart speakers. Users will no longer have to play music using Bluetooth or third party apps if music on Amazon is free.

In the US, Prime Music has a similar set up where listening to songs with ads is free but Amazon Music Unlimited is a paid service.

Since Spotify’s launch on February 28 and YouTube Music coming to India on March 13, players in the music streaming space have been drastically decreasing the prices of their subscription plans.

Where Spotify was able to get one million subscribers within a week of its launch in India, YouTube Music was able to attain three million.

Gaana and JioSaavn kicked off the price war by cutting their annual subscription by 70%. Even Apple Music jumped on the bandwagon to reduce their monthly subscription to ₹99, putting it at par with Gaana Plus, JioSaavn Pro and YouTube Music.

And, price wars aren’t constrained to the music streaming space either. Even when it comes to video, Netflix was reportedly testing a mobile only weekly subscription at ₹250 and dropped their prices even further to test a ₹65 mobile only weekly plan.

See also:
Apple Music is now cheaper than Spotify in India

Comparing Spotify, JioSaavn, Gaana and Amazon Music — which one makes sense for you

Spotify silently launches in India with premium membership options starting at ₹13