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The digital music market is suddenly witnessing a lot of developments. First Apple signed an acquisition deal with Beats and now a report suggests that Amazon is preparing to roll out a music streaming service of its own in summer this year.

Amazon has a huge ecosystem centered on its entertainment content. From movies to TV shows and more, Amazon Prime Service is one of the key parts of the retail giant’s online presence. Amazon needs this presence today more than ever because of the company’s foray into the tablet market, a venture which can’t survive without a huge content ecosystem.

So it only makes sense if Amazon aims to add music streaming services to the mix. According to the report, the service will be initially offered for free only to Amazon Prime customers. It must be noted here that Prime is a paid Amazon service which comes at $99 per year in subscription charges.

A rather dumb catch in Amazon’s expected music service is that it will only feature such songs which are older than six months. In other words, if you expect to listen to the hot and new music on the Amazon music service, you will be disappointed. Amazon is probably going with this policy simply to cut down on royalty costs which are particularly high for the latest songs.

Although some have cited reservations on such a music service, Amazon has a real chance of pulling it off with the 20 million+ Prime subscribers that it already has. Even if the service is not as awesome as the others available online, it is still free for Prime customers and that itself can be a huge incentive for them.

Courtesy: Mac Rumors

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