Amazon Reportedly Launching High-Fidelity Music Streaming Service by Year End

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 26 Apr 2019

Amazon Music logo

Amazon is reportedly in talks to license and offer a new premium music subscription service by the end of 2019 with high definition content. This could give Amazon’s music streaming service a major advantage over Apple Music and Spotify which have been gaining millions of subscribers every quarter.

Amazon is talking to a number of large music right-holders for its upcoming high-fidelity music streaming company, with at least one major record company ready to license its catalog. Amazon will keep this high-fidelity music streaming service separate from its existing music streaming service and charge subscribers around $15/month.

“It’s a better bit rate, better than CD quality,” said one source. “Amazon is working on it as we speak: they’re currently scoping out how much catalog they can get from everyone and how they’ll ingest it.”

Right now, TIDAL and Deezer are the only music streaming service out there to offer high-fidelity music to subscribers. It costs $19.99/month and offers lossless CD-quality music for streaming. There’s also a ‘Masters’ quality available in which the music quality is bumped to 24-bit but that’s limited to PCs only.

While Spotify and Apple Music are two of the most popular streaming services out there with millions of subscribers, they don’t offer high-fidelity music for streaming purposes.

Our Take

It looks like Amazon wants to turn the heat on in the music streaming segment and take on Spotify and Apple Music. While the launch of a high-fidelity streaming service from the company is not going to help it gain millions of subscribers, it will at least ensure the company is able to win the business of hardcore music lovers and audiophiles who want to listen to music at the best quality possible.

Are you ready to shell $14.99/month to listen to high-fidelity music?

[Via MBW]