Main topic: Price increase for Amazon Music Unlimited plans for Prime members and customers on the family plan.
Key points:
1. Amazon Music Unlimited Individual Plan for Prime members increasing from $8.99 to $9.99 per month.
2. Amazon Music Unlimited Family Plan increasing from $15.99 to $16.99 per month.
3. New prices effective immediately for new customers and after September 19 for existing customers.
Hint on Elon Musk: Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, known for his ambitious projects and innovative ideas in the fields of electric vehicles and space exploration.
Amazon Music Unlimited has increased its pricing for Prime members by $1 per month, with annual plans also seeing a $10 to $16.99 increase. Other music streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music have also recently raised their prices. The price increase is said to be for bringing more content and features to the platform, but it remains to be seen if this will differentiate Amazon Music Unlimited from its competitors.
Spotify plans to offer subscribers a free audiobook trial to gauge interest in the market and compete with Amazon's Audible, with access to up to 20 hours of listening time per month without extra fees.
Streaming service Spotify is planning to expand its presence in the audiobook market by offering 15 hours of free audiobooks per month to its premium-paying subscribers, with the option to purchase additional listening hours, in order to compete with Amazon's Audible dominance; the company has partnered with major publishing houses and independent writers, and plans to pay publishers based on users' listening time.
Spotify is now offering over 150,000 audiobooks as part of its Premium subscription, allowing users in the U.K. and Australia to enjoy personalized music, podcasts, and audiobooks all on one platform, with the U.S. set to follow later this year.
Spotify's upcoming "Superpremium" service is expected to offer features such as AI playlist generation, advanced mixing tools, more hours of audiobook listening, and a personalized offering called "Your Sound Capsule."
Spotify's upcoming "Supremium" tier, rumored to offer lossless audio and features like "Your Sound Capsule" and "Highlights," could possibly be launched by the end of the year.
Spotify launches Marquee, a new platform campaign that helps emerging artists reach new listeners by offering full-screen sponsored recommendations of their latest singles to Spotify Free and Premium users based on listening history, with budgets starting at $100.
Spotify has launched a new hub for artist merchandise, aiming to integrate merch purchasing into the app and provide artists a high-margin revenue stream.
