Amazon has silently launched its music streaming platform Prime Music in India. The platform is available on web (music.amazon.in), as well as on Google’s Play store and iOs. Untill now Prime Music was only available to Echo customers in India on a preview basis. The app comes with Amazon Prime membership and claims to offer ad-free music streaming. Prime Music has content deals with music label such as T-Series, Venus Music, Sony Music, Saregama, and Zee Music Company.
The development comes at a time, when Times Internet’s Gaana.com has secured funding of $115 million, and the Swedish music service Spotify has reportedly opened its office in Mumbai possibly hinting its entry in India.
First Impressions
After you sign-in (I am already a Prime member, so it was one touch sign-in for me) to the app, you are asked to select your music preference in terms of language. It offers some 12 Indic languages, including Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Marathi, Bengali, English etc. In settings, the app gives options like streaming quality, also storage location (if only your device has an external memory card), download only on Wi-Fi etc. Users can also put ‘sleep timer’ in the app, the timer’s span is from 15 minutes to 60 minutes, if you tick on this, the app will turn off automatically after playing for selected time. The app can also be synced with Amazon’s personal assistant device Alexa.
Below are some screenshots of our trial:
MediaNama’s Take
It looks like Amazon Music will have an edge over its competition, as the Amazon Prime membership comes at Rs 999 per year, which gives access to video streaming, free delivery from Amazon’s e-tail space on select items, and now the ad-free music service as well. As compared to this, Saavn comes at a yearly fee of Rs 1050, Times Internet’s Gaana at Rs 1020, Apple Music comes at Rs 1200 per year. However, Prime Music does not have originals yet unlike Saavn and Gaana.
