Amazon Launches Own Music Streaming Service

Amazon has launched a music streaming service just weeks after Apple took on industry-leader Spotify.

Prime Music offers Amazon Prime members access to more than one million songs at no additional cost to their annual subscription.

However, the selection of music is significantly smaller than that of their rivals - both Spotify and Apple Music offer catalogues featuring around 30 million songs.

Amazon Prime costs £79 per year and gives customers cloud photo storage, video streaming and e-book lending.

It also gives subscribers one-hour delivery in London on more than 10,000 items, and next-day delivery for people living elsewhere.

Amazon Music UK head Paul Firth said: "Choice is something we don’t see at play that much in the music streaming market, so if you are a music streaming customer you can either pay £120 a year, or you can be subject to interruptions from ads or other listening restrictions through one of the free services."

"We know, through having spent 15 years selling music to people, that there are a lot of customers who really love music but for whom £120 a year is a lot of money, so to be able to offer them that music streaming service as part of a £79-a-year package, along with all those other benefits, that offers great value to our customers."

Music from chart artists such as One Direction and Paolo Nutini sits alongside tracks from classic artists including Bob Dylan and David Bowie.

It will be available through smartphone apps for iOS and Android, and through web browser and Amazon Fire tablets.

As with Spotify and Apple Music, users will be able to stream tracks and playlists and download them for offline playback.