Amazon starts streaming

Article Excerpt

AMAZON.COM $817.69 (Nasdaq symbol AMZN; TSINetwork Rating: Average) (206-266 -1000; www.amazon.com; Shares outstanding: 474.0 million; Market cap: $387.6 billion; No dividends paid) has launched its own music-streaming service. This puts it in direct competition with Spotify, Pandora, Google Play Music, Apple Music and others. The new service, called Amazon Music Unlimited, is available for just $3.99 per month for those subscribers who own voicecontrolled Amazon Echo speakers. (Echo is a “smart” speaker that responds to voice commands.) Subscribers who plan to use the service through devices other than the Echo will pay $7.99 per month (for Amazon Prime members) or $9.99 (for non-members). Amazon will continue to offer its Prime members a more-limited streaming service for free. Music streaming is a crowded market, but the company aims to attract the large number of Amazon Prime users who already pay for other music-streaming services. Amazon.com is still a hold. hold…