SPOT Spotify Technology SA

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)

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