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Amazon launches unlimited music streaming service; Pandora launches 'Plus' service (and new logo)

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Amazon is finally unveiling their big dive into the streaming music waters. The company just announced their “Amazon Music Unlimited” music streaming service, which contains three subscriber tiers and features a catalogue that puts it in the same category as Spotify and Apple Music.

The service is specifically geared towards existing Amazon customers; people who own their Echo device (and its personal assistant, Alexa) pay only $3.99 for it, while Amazon Prime subscribers pay $7.99, and everyone else gets the same $9.99 figure as Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal.

For now, Amazon is really pushing the Alexa angle for the new service, arguing that it’s really enhanced by the device. From Billboard:

A big part of that is the work Amazon put into Alexa. In addition to asking for specific songs or albums, Alexa will also be able to respond to queries like “Play the new Green Day song” and come up with the band’s latest single…Alexa can also can match lyric snippets to hit songs, and can pull up playlists by request based on decades, eras, moods or specific situations based on a user’s listening history (“Play pop music from the ’80s,” or “Play Pearl Jam’s catalog from 1991-1994”). Amazon is also debuting a sort of “podcast liner notes” program called “Side to Side,” wherein artists such as Sting, OneRepublic, the Chainsmokers, Jason Aldean and Lindsey Sterling, for example, will explain the backstory of their work alongside their songs.

Meanwhile, Pandora —  is which has been rumored to have their own streaming-on-demand service in the works —  launched a update to their streaming service last month. While they haven’t gone full Spotify yet, they rebranded Pandora One as, which officially launched today and for $4.99 you get unlimited skips, replays and offline listening (and no ads). Also, this new logo:

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We’ll see how this whole streaming race plays out over the coming months and years. And, eventually, we’ll see how our robot overlords end up treating us. You can check out Pandora’s rebranding video below.