Amazon launched an on-demand streaming music service, Amazon Music Unlimited, earlier this week. Most reviews of it have focused on two things: its pricing and its tight integration with Amazon’s Echo digital assistant. And many commentators have questioned whether even a company as powerful and ubiquitous as Amazon can have a meaningful impact as a new entrant in a crowded market. But while there is one aspect of the market where Amazon has a window of opportunity, Amazon Music Unlimited doesn’t seem well positioned to exploit it.
The window of opportunity is Android. It’s clear that Amazon wants to use Amazon Music Unlimited as yet another way to add value to Echo devices. That’s why Amazon struck what I suspect are loss-leader deals with record labels to be able to offer the service to Echo owners for only $3.99 per month, with usage restricted to Echo devices only.
If you want to use the service on a smartphone, you have to pay the standard $9.99 a month, or $7.99 per month if you’re an Amazon Prime member. Now is a great time for a superior on-demand music service to grab a share of the market that uses Android devices — which account for 87.6% of the smartphone market worldwide. While the features of music services are largely down to personal tastes, my view is that all of the widely-used services for Android leave something to be desired.
Spotify has great social features, but it suffers from a not-very-intuitive user interface, inferior codec, and a lack of curation. Apple Music has unsurpassed curation and great sound quality, but the current Android version is unstable and falls short in music search and browse functions. The new version of Apple Music for iOS 10 is a serious improvement over the current version, but judging from past experience, the Android version is likely to lag months behind. And Google’s on-demand music experience — spanning YouTube, YT Music (a music-oriented overlay to YouTube) and Google Play Music — is confusing and messy.
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