Amazon Music to Keep on Rockin' With High-Definition Streaming
September 17 2019 - 9:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Anne Steele
Amazon.com Inc. is introducing a high-resolution version of its
music service, making it the first major subscription-streaming
player to offer digital sound quality on par with CDs.
The move into higher-quality audio--at a higher price--is a sign
of the music-streaming market's maturation, say music industry
executives, who have called for different forms of subscriptions
beyond the standard $9.99-a-month offerings from Spotify Technology
SA and Apple Inc.
Other services including Tidal offer high-definition sound, but
they tend to market to a niche, audiophile audience. Now Amazon
Music, the No. 3 music-streaming service by subscriptions,
envisions bringing better sound quality to the masses. At $12.99 a
month for Prime members and $14.99 a month for nonmembers, Amazon
Music HD is intended to be more affordable than comparable services
such as one from Tidal, which costs $19.99 a month.
Music streaming has become mainstream--accounting for 80% of
revenue from recorded music, according to an industry trade group.
But in getting there, audio quality has suffered, says Steve Boom,
Amazon's vice president for music. Enough customers now see audio
quality as important enough that they will pay for it, so the move
into the market is worth it, he said. "This is the next wave in
music streaming," Mr. Boom said.
The new tier, available Tuesday in the U.S., U.K., Germany and
Japan, has more than 50 million audio tracks in CD-quality high
definition and what the company describes as millions of tracks in
even-higher-quality "Ultra-HD."
Amazon's Ultra-HD is comparable to Tidal's "Masters," which both
promise better sound quality than CD. Tidal offers about 60 audio
million tracks, including more than 170,000 at "Masters"
quality.
Since the emergence of the CD--the first popular digital
format--in the 1980s, there has been a running tension between
convenience and audio quality--a dynamic that has only intensified
with the emergence of digital downloads and streaming. Some
audiophiles complained that early CDs, in particular, suffered from
poorer sound quality than vinyl records. Many still believe CDs,
downloads and streams sound worse than vinyl.
"We all have 50 million songs at the tip of our fingers and
music's never been more convenient than it is today," Mr. Boom
said. "What's been lost in that march forward has been this
sacrifice in audio quality."
Amazon doesn't disclose how many music subscribers it has but
people familiar with the matter said it recently had more than 34
million, which include a $9.99-a-month Amazon Music Unlimited
service and the more limited Prime Music, which comes included with
Prime memberships. Spotify leads globally, with 108 million,
followed by Apple Music with more than 60 million.
Tidal most recently disclosed its subscriber counts in 2016,
when it said it had 3 million subscribers overall, 45% of whom paid
for its HD service. At the same time, Spotify said it had 30
million paying subscribers and Apple Music had 11 million.
Record business executives are more optimistic about Amazon's
prospects with high-definition audio, especially as it taps its
appeal to the mainstream.
The new tier has earned the approval of rocker Neil Young, who
has advocated for higher-quality audio since the introduction of
digital music-- even launching a high-resolution streaming service
for his own music last year.
"This will be the biggest thing to happen in music since the
introduction of digital audio 40 years ago," he said in a statement
provided by Amazon.
Write to Anne Steele at Anne.Steele@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 17, 2019 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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