amazon-prime

Amazon Prime added "hundred of thousands" of songs (still no deal w/ Universal); Google trying to buy Spotify?

Amazon

Rumblings from the land of streaming giants. Amazon says that it has added “hundreds of thousands of songs” to its Amazon Prime music streaming service, following complaints that its selection was too small. A few of the artists mentioned in their announcement are Kendrick Lamar, Neil Young, Nick Cave, A$AP Rocky and Oasis. Unfortunately, they still don’t have a deal with Universal. Subscriptions were raised from $79 to $99 this past April, and they include unlimited music, movie and TV show streams, as well as free two-day shipping.

Spotify is a bigger kid on the block, with 20 million songs in its catalog to Amazon’s million and change. Rumors circulated that Google was interested in purchasing Spotify, but balked at their asking price of well above $10 billion, after a Wall Street Journal article surfaced, reporting just that. However, Recode states that they reached out to “multiple sources at both companies” and claims that there have been no discussions between the companies about an acquisition. The Recode article says it was nothing more than meetings between Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek and Google execs about commercial deals at YouTube, Google Play, and Android:

“There has not been a single conversation about Google’s interest between the two,” said one source, reflecting many others. “There was never a price, never a negotiation, never anything.”

Neither Google nor Spotify has given an official statement on the matter.

If anyone is going to purchase Spotify, it seems unlikely to be Apple, who acquired Dr. Dre’s Beats for $3 billion earlier this year.