Amazon To Add Music Streaming To Amazon Prime Service

Amazon is adding a music streaming service to its Amazon Prime premium membership program, says Buzzfeed. Amazon is planning to launch service, which reportedly hasn't been named yet, in June or July.

Details of the deal are still murky, but according to industry sources, Amazon Prime members will have access to music six months old and older. The service will work across a number of devices and may be offered in a mobile app like Amazon's video streaming service.

According to Buzzfeed, Amazon has made deals with Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, two of the three major record labels. Amazon will reportedly pick and choose music from their catalogs to make available to Prime members.

Amazon Prime costs $99 a year (roughly $9 a month) and gives members free two-day shipping on certain products, access to video-streaming service Prime Instant Video and instant access to more than 580,000 books from the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library.

Amazon is the latest in a number of companies investing in streaming music services. Apple announced yesterday it is buying Beats Electronics, including its Beats Audio streaming service, for $3 billion. Twitter was rumored to be buying SoundCloud (worth around $700 million), but pulled the plug on the deal.

Diehard music fans have embraced streaming services like Spotify and Beats, each of which give users access to about 20 million songs, but people interested in Prime’s other offerings will find its music catalog a big draw. And for the same price as a subscription to either Beats or Spotify, they’ll get a lot more bang for their buck.