Amazon Music Unlimited to launch in Australia with cheaper subscription tier

Spotify is undoubtedly dominating the Australasian streaming market right now, but come February 1, there will be a new kid in town – and she’s here to curate your music taste and make you talk to her when you’re at home.

While Amazon has been busy rolling out its local launch for a few months now, finally launching to take on retailers in early December, Amazon Music Unlimited will enter the market on Feb 1 with a catalogue of more than 45 million songs.

The streaming service will offer “hundreds of hand-curated playlists and personalised stations featuring acclaimed local talent,” according to the announce.

Users can listen to Amazon Music Unlimited ad-free with unlimited skips, and just like its rivals, download for offline listening.

Amazon Music Unlimited will arrive with three pricing tiers

The monthly plan options are:

1. The Echo Plan, offering full access to Amazon Music Unlimited at the price of $4.99AUD/month on a single Echo, Echo Dot or Echo Plus
2. The Individual Plan at $11.99AUD/month
3. Or the Family Plan, which will allow up to six members of a household to share a subscription for just $17.99AUD/month.

While the individual and family plans are priced the same as Spotify, the Echo Plan will help differentiate Amazon Music Unlimited from rivals. This is expected to work just like Spotify or Apple Music (in that it’s unlimited, ad-free music on demand) but you can only listen to it on Amazon’s Echo player.

The service will arrive with 150 playlists, mostly dedicated to local music discovery. They include: “Women Crush Wednesday”, “Australian Rock Royalty”, “Top 50 Australia” and “Top 40 New Zealand”.

Its Stations include: “Top Dance,” “Top Alternative,” and “Acoustic Pop”.

“We’ve seen phenomenal feedback from customers who use Amazon Music Unlimited, and we’re thrilled to bring an entirely new world of music streaming possibilities to listeners in Australia and New Zealand,” stated Sean McMullan, Head of International Expansion for Amazon Music. “We’re opening doors for our customers to have access to an incredible catalogue of music, and to be able to listen to some of their favourite artists while using the power of voice in exciting new ways.”

Voice search and control using devices like Amazon Echo or Google Assistant-enabled devices such as Google Home, continue to grow in popularity. Amazon Music Unlimited’s entrance to the market is just another confirmation of that.

Local customers can now pre-order an Amazon Echo, Echo Dot or Echo plus, with devices shipping February 1. This means Amazon’s assistant Alexa can play you specific stations, but also play the most streamed tracks (“play me the top pop song in Australia right now.”) Amazon hopes its users will be using Alexa to discover and listen to the music they want based on mood, genre, era, artist name, and song or album title.

:: Amazon Australia launches: The music industry reacts

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.