Amazon launches Prime Music service in India, to take on Gaana, Wynk

US online retail giant Amazon has launched its Prime Music subscription service in India as it pushes to capture a larger chunk of the fast-growing content streaming market in the country.

The service will be available to customers who subscribe to its Prime programme in India at no additional cost and can be accessed via apps on Android, iOS, the web and on Amazon's Fire TV Stick and Echo devices. Customers of Amazon's Echo devices have got a taste of Prime Music since their launch here, but now it is being rolled out to everyone.

Anticipating the challenge, India's largest music streaming service Gaana has raised $115 million from Chinese Internet giant Tencent and parent company Times Group, according to a report in the Economic Times today.

Amazon will take on other streaming services such as Gaana, Wynk and even Apple Music in India. The service is paid owing to the annual Rs 999 subscription cost for Prime, but is being perceived as one of the most economical options considering it includes access to Prime Video as well as free expedited deliveries for products they buy on Amazon.

The move to launch Prime Music will also deliver a blow to rival Netflix, which has already been eclipsed by Amazon in the number of subscribers for its video streaming service. Analysts tracking the space however refrain from sharing exact membership statistics. In the run up to this launch, Amazon has partnered with several of the biggest music labels in India such as T-Series, Zee Music, etc.

Amazon announced the launch of the service in a press release on Wednesday, a few hours after it went live for users in the country. The app’s listing on the Play Store reads that the service will offer music across 12 languages - English, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Rajasthani.

It isn’t known how large the spread of music on Prime Music will be in India yet. In the US, Amazon offers access to two million songs as part of its Prime programme, but charges an extra $8 per month for users to get access to its entire inventory of 40 million songs through its Music Unlimited service.

Going forward, one can expect Amazon to sign exclusivity deals with labels and movie producers in India, similar to what is being seen in the US and Europe with large music streaming services Spotify and Apple. However, Amazon is the only global player in this space to be adapting itself to local tastes in music and content.

While Apple had taken the lead among global music streaming services entering India, the company has failed to localise content even though it dropped its subscription rates here to the lowest in the world. The company charges under $2 per month for its Apple Music subscription, while charging $9.99 for the same service in the US.

Google too has launched its Play Music subscription service in India at Rs 99 per month but has failed to localise and market the product widely. Even globally, Google’s Play Music service doesn’t hold a candle against rivals Spotify and Apple Music or even Amazon Music.