Amazon Music Unlimited streaming service has registered a staggering growth of more than 70% in the past year. According to Financial Times Amazon Music currently has 32 million subscribers.

It is worth noting that Apple Music Unlimited or Spotify is way ahead with 60-million and 100-million users. In fact, just recently Eddy Cue mentioned that Apple Music has raked 60-million users. The report attributes the growth to Amazon Echo smart speakers and other devices that use Alexa. All the Alexa devices have Amazon Music setup as a default music player.

However, Amazon has gained momentum in recent months, propelled by its ubiquity with consumers and Alexa, its popular intelligent assistant, which can play music through voice commands issued to its wireless Echo speaker. “[Amazon] have gone all in on [music],” said a senior music executive at one of the major record labels. “We see high engagement on their service.”

Our Take

It is convenient to use Amazon Music Unlimited as opposed to Spotify on Echo speakers. For instance you always need to add ‘Spotify’ to the command, however, Echo will simply route the music to Amazon Music Player when you just ask Alexa to play “Warren Zevon.”

Amazon Music Unlimited subscription is currently priced at $10, however Prime Members are charged $8 while those exclusive Echo speaker users are charged $4. The staggering growth rates for Amazon Music is also possible since it is yet to hit a saturation point. All said and done, Amazon seems to be gunning for the numero uno position by bundling the Music offering with Alexa devices. However, it still has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to Apple Music and Spotify.