Amazon to reportedly offer Echo-only streaming music for $5 a month

Amazon is working on two new music streaming services that could be available as soon as next month, a source told Recode.

One service would be an economical, all-you-can-eat offering: $10 per month to stream from Apple Music, Spotify, and others from any device. Music streaming services like Apple Pay and Spotify ask customers to spend $10 a month to receive unlimited streaming music.

The other — more interesting — service would be available only on the Amazon Echo and cost just $5 per month. While ad-free and providing unlimited access to its music library, the service would not be available from smartphones or other devices. Such an offering speaks to Amazon’s devotion to developing Echo as a platform for new services.

Amazon may launch the new services in September, though the company has yet to finalize deals with major music companies, the source said.

The Amazon Echo became available last spring and sold three million units in its first 18 months. Amazon hopes to sell about 10 million of them in 2017, according to The Information.

Meanwhile, Amazon is not alone in viewing voice-activation devices as a platform for services.

Google will reportedly release its smart speaker Google Home later this year and already has a streaming music service called Google Play. And VentureBeat has reported that Apple will revamp Apple TV as a competitor to the streaming services from Amazon and Google. It’s not clear whether the new Google and Apple devices will support third-party services like Spotify.