Amazon.com May Offer Cheaper Music Streaming Subscription, Report Says

David Oliver

If Spotify and Apple Music's monthly charges are too expensive for you, Amazon.com (ticker: AMZN) could soon have the option you've been waiting for.

Recode, citing industry sources, says Amazon wants to launch two music subscription services next month. One of them would cost $10 month, in the similar vein of Spotify and Apple (AAPL) Music (i.e. ad-free streaming whenever you want, play anywhere, download and listen offline). The other, cheaper subscription -- possibly only costing $4 or $5 per month -- would also be ad-free and on-demand. But there's a catch: It would only work on Amazon's Echo player.

Recode notes this is against typical strategies for the music industry. Most Spotify subscribers use phones to sign up and Apple Music honed in on iPhone users for its launch, later also targeting Android phone users.

The retail giant is confident in the Echo, according to The Information, and looking to expand upon its inaugural year of reportedly 1 million devices sold the second half of last year following a greater U.S. rollout. In 2016, it's aiming for 3 million, with 10 million come 2017.

With Amazon's staggering ambitions evident across its platforms -- Amazon Prime, Amazon Web Services and shipping plans, just to name a few -- it still has to prove worthy of its pricier stock (aka profitability can't falter). Though its earnings and revenue blew past expectations in its latest quarter, even that wasn't enough to make Wall Street sweet on the company.

If this cheaper service does come to fruition, it would have to greatly move Echo sales and in turn contribute to strong profit for the company to exceed investors' high expectations.

Amazon's stock is up about 12.4 percent on the year, and was up 0.6 percent in Tuesday morning trading.

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David Oliver is Associate Editor, Social Media at U.S. News & World Report. Follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, or send him an email at doliver@usnews.com.