Immediately after this morning Announcement Apple Next-generation music service Featuring lossless audio and spatial audio that support Dolby Atmos, Amazon may be moving towards maintaining its own streaming music subscribers. According to the company, Amazon Music HD, a high-quality streaming layer, will be available to all eligible Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers at no additional cost.
Amazon first Announcement With Amazon Music HD in the fall of 2019, you’ll have access to over 50 million songs streamed in what Amazon calls HD, with a bit depth of 16 bits and a sample rate of 44.1kHz (about CD quality). We also promised more than “millions” of songs to be streamed in Ultra HD or 24-bit at sample rates up to 192kHz (or better than CD quality).
Today, Amazon Music’s HD catalog has grown to over 70 million songs and over 7 million Ultra HD tracks are available. Amazon Music HD customers also have access to a catalog of songs remixed in 3D audio formats such as Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 RA. These catalogs can be played on Amazon’s unique fidelity speaker, Echo Studio.
360RA music can also be streamed via Amazon Music HD on Sony RA5000 and RA3000 speakers using Alexa Cast.
The launch of HD streaming is a way to counter the threat from Tidal, a music streaming service that caters to audiophiles with higher quality streams, and how to differentiate it from larger streaming rivals such as Apple and Spotify. Was considered. — The latter Recently announced its own high-end subscription, Spotify HiFi, price and release date are still unknown.
To date, Amazon Music HD was priced at $ 12.99 / month for Amazon Prime subscribers and $ 14.99 / month otherwise. Currently, according to Amazon, new and existing subscribers to the Amazon Music Unlimited Individual Plan ($ 7.99 / month for Prime members, $ 9.99 / month otherwise) or Family Plan ($ 14.99 / month) have no additional cost. You can upgrade to Amazon Music HD with. Save $ 5 a month.
Changes will begin in the next billing cycle and will be supported in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, France, Italy and Spain.
“When we first launched Amazon Music HD, our goal was to lead the industry by enabling music fans around the world to stream the highest quality recordings. Artists listen to their music. That’s the way it was intended, “said Steve Boom, VP of Amazon Music. In a statement about today’s news. “We are delighted that Amazon Music HD is now available to everyone at no additional cost. All music fans should have access to this quality of music, but now they do,” he added.
Amazon’s move to upgrade its HD catalog for free follows Apple’s announcement this morning. Add lossless audio to Apple Music at no additional cost. From next month. Apple has sold over 75 million songs on lossless audio. The upgrade will also provide spatial audio to support Dolby Atmos. Given the changing market, Spotify is under pressure to make HiFi music services competitively priced.
Amazon Music Unlimited has been regarded as a dark horse for music streaming because it has the potential to grow to larger sizes based on its relationship with Amazon’s popular Prime subscription. The service has had 55 million subscribers since early 2020, but Amazon declined to provide the updated numbers today. Apple Music for comparison Announcement With 60 million subscribers in 2019, 72 million Probably more by early 2020 80 million Now.On the other hand, Spotify 158 million Paid subscribers.
Source link Amazon upgrades lossless music streaming service for free – TechCrunch
