Report: Amazon Is Throwing Itself Into Yet Another Hyper-Competitive Field: Music

This might give you some déjà vu: Amazon is about to launch a service that will vie with an already rich field of competitors.

This time, it’s not grocery deliveries or video streaming that Amazon promises to perform better than the rest—it’s music streaming. The company will launch a standalone music streaming service by late summer or early fall, according to Reuters, placing it head-to-head with Apple and Spotify, among others.

It’s likely part of Amazon’s plan to continue to offer Prime subscriptions, but to supplement that option with other subscriptions like its new streaming video service. Rumors of this new offering have been circulating since at least January, when The New York Post wrote that Amazon was planning to launch a streaming service.

But the platform is throwing its hat into a very crowded ring: Apple Music is only a year old and has already cultivated 13 million subscribers.

Then there’s 16-year-old Pandora, with 80 million active listeners, and Spotify, with its 30 million subscribers as of March. Google, too, recently launched Google Play Music.

But Amazon must expect that its broad reach can give it some dominance despite other companies’ early adopter advantage. Amazon rarely plays to lose.