Apple was the latest big company to dive head-first into the streaming music market, shaking things up and reportedly pulling subscribers away from some of its smaller rivals in the process. But Apple Music, Spotify and the rest of the current crop of on demand music services will seemingly soon have some new competition that could pose a serious threat — which, ultimately, is good news for consumers.
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The New York Times on Sunday reported that two large companies with plenty of experience in the music industry are about to step up their efforts to compete in the growing market for unlimited on demand music streaming. This new space is currently dominated by companies including Spotify, Apple and Google.
Joining them in the near future will seemingly be Pandora, which reportedly plans to make two big announcements in the coming months. First, in an announcement that could come as soon as this week, Pandora will reportedly debut an updated version of its $5 internet radio service that allows users to skip more songs. The new update will also apparently let users store playlists online.
Then, ahead of the holidays this year, The Times says Pandora plans to unveil a new $10 service option that will compete directly with Spotify and Apple Music, giving users on demand access to its catalog of tens of millions of songs.
Also set to unveil a new streaming music service is Amazon, which already offers a service called Amazon Prime Music that is bundled with its $99-per-year Prime service. The new service will be a standalone option that gives customers unlimited access to Amazon’s entire music catalog. The service will reportedly cost $10 per month, just like Spotify and Apple Music, but a less expensive option that costs “about half that amount” will be available to customers with an Amazon Echo, Amazon Tap or Amazon Echo Dot portable speaker.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard that these new services are in the works, but NYT says an announcement should be made in the coming weeks.
