As classes resume and schools reopen, retail outlets all over the country take advantage of the season to market their products and sell more. The most known strategy comes in the form of promotions for students and Amazon is quick to make their own offering.
Student offering
The company has announced that it will offer its streaming music service, Amazon Music Unlimited, to students for $4.99 a month. It is a considerably low price compared to the monthly $7.99 fee for Prime members and the regular $9.99 monthly charge for non-Prime members. In total, that is a saving of $60 per year for non-Prime student members.
As for students who are eligible to be Prime Student subscribers, the discount is extended as an option to enroll for $6 for a six-month access. After the six-month timeframe, the price reverts to $4.99 a month as long as the subscriber remains a student.
How to avail
To avail the student offer, it is standard procedure for Amazon to require the customers to first validate student status. To do this, the company utilizes a third-party service called SheerID. The good thing about this validation process is that it will not cause any interruption to the customer. The process will be facilitated without having to disrupt and demand time from the customer.
Is it similar to Prime Music?
There is actually a difference between Prime Music and Music Unlimited, and it comes down to preference.
As the name suggests, the former is a feature incorporated in the Prime membership. It gives subscribers access to over 2 million songs and over a thousand playlists and stations. The latter, on the other hand, has tens of millions of songs and thousands of playlists and stations that are expert-programmed.
Between these two options, it is safe to say that Amazon would actually prefer that students purchase an Echo device, which also has access to play their music.
And with Alexa as an additional feature, the user can find a song with a simple voice command. Actually, this is probably be the cheapest way to get the Music Unlimited subscription since it comes with the Echo plan for $3.99/month. This plan offers full access to the service with a minor restriction on playback.
Price wars
Since its launch in late 2016, the Music Unlimited service has been competing with on-demand music streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify.
Apple first offered the student status subscription of $4.99 a month in May 2016. Spotify also offers the Premium service to students for the same price. Looking at the numbers, Spotify has the most number of paid subscribers at 60 million while Apple Music has 27 million. Amazon has managed to secure 16 million subscribers and hopefully, this new digital offering will help attract more.
