Amazon is keen on pushing its music service through its voice-controlled, intelligent personal assistant Alexa. Amazon’s Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers use Alexa for voice control.

Amazon will begin by offering music in ten languages like English, Hindi, Tamil

Amazon will begin by offering music in ten languages like English, Hindi, Tamil, without any additional costs for Prime members who pay a subsidized annual fee of Rs 999. Users can also download songs without any additional charges and enjoy ad-free listening, said Sean McMullan, head of international expansion for Amazon Music. He told that voice-controlled devices like Alexa were transforming the way people consumed music. We are moving from streaming music on our mobile phones to voice-based streaming, he said. Amazon Music will be made available on Android, iOS, Amazon Fire TV an Echo devices.

Amazon India captured the streaming media market in India with the launch of Prime Video in India. Amazon’s Prime Video was included with the Prime membership which offers free shipping, one-day and two-day deliveries, among others.

The Prime Music service will provide access to unlimited ad-free music streaming across various genres and languages. With this, the Amazon Prime can be termed as one of the best value for money proposition when it comes to media streaming services.

The launch of the Prime Music service in India comes just after Amazon increased the price of Prime membership from ₹499 to ₹999 — after an introductory period of about one year.

In the last few years, global players like Apple Music, Google Music have entered the India market

Along with Gaana, another domestic music streaming service, which is largely dependent on advertising revenue, is Saavn, backed by Tiger Global and other investors. In the last few years, global players like Apple Music, Google Music, and now Amazon have entered the India market which charge a subscription fee. Amazon Music is a paid product in the US where it competes with the like of Spotify. It is available across 30 countries globally.

In terms of music streaming services, Amazon ranks third globally, with over 16 million paid subscribers. Indian operation will surely help Amazon to garner more subscribers.

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Gaana, a leading digital music service in India, is raising $115 million in new round of funding from Chinese internet giant Tencent, with participation from its seed investor Times Internet.

Tencent is the majority shareholder of Tencent Music Entertainment, China’s largest music
streaming business. It also operates Joox, a leading music streaming platform in Southeast Asia.

Gaana intends to use the capital to further invest into technology to use AI to personalize
music experiences for each consumer, to further develop its subscription product for paying
users, and to develop aligned music experiences for Gaana consumers.

Gaana claims to have crossed 60 million monthly active users in December last year.

Gaana was incubated seven years ago by Times Internet. Over the last four years, its mobile app grew 700 per cent in consumption. Eighty-eight per cent of Gaana’s monthly users come from India.

Prashan Agarwal, CEO Gaana, said: “Music streaming is the future of music consumption
globally, and in India, we’re only 10 per cent of the way towards building a business useful for 500 million Indians. Tencent will be a great partner to help us enable India to access and enjoy unlimited music at their fingertips.”

“Gaana is a leading music streaming platform in India, where millions of users stay tuned to its rich music library including its exclusive Bollywood content,” said Martin Lau, President of Tencent Holdings.

“As more affordable mobile data plans are driving smartphone penetration in India, we believe growth in the music streaming market will accelerate. By investing in and collaborating with Gaana, we look forward to bringing more innovation and better experiences to all Indian music lovers.”

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