Those who are not part of the online retailer Amazon's Prime program will pay more for the tech giant's music streaming service in the future.

As Amazon announced on Thursday in an email to subscribers and on its website, the individual subscription will cost EUR 10.99 per month from February 21 instead of EUR 9.99 a month.

The family tariff for up to six users has increased from EUR 14.99 to EUR 16.99.

The student tariff increases from EUR 4.99 to EUR 5.99.

Price increases are also taking place in the UK, the US, the world's largest music market, Japan and Canada.

Benjamin Fisher

Editor in Business.

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The move follows about three months after a price increase by Apple Music.

At the beginning of 2022, the smaller French service Deezer adjusted the prices by this amount.

There had already been a variety of price increases in music streaming before, and market leader Spotify in particular has been quite active here in recent months.

However, these concerned almost exclusively combination tariffs and not the large markets.

The symbolic price point of 9.99 euros, dollars or pounds had always remained untouched since the start of the streaming offer more than 10 years ago.

The reasons given for this are the tough competition and the largely identical music offerings of the services.

Amazon reacts to Apple – and Spotify?

After Apple was the first of the major global services to say goodbye to the 9.99 euros in October last year, industry observers say it is only a matter of time before the competition gradually follows suit.

The prices of market leader Spotify and YouTube Music have so far remained at the old level in the major markets.

Both Amazon, Apple and Deezer offer hi-fi quality as part of their subscriptions without the price mark-up that used to be the case.

Meanwhile, a reaction from Spotify could be imminent.

Shortly after Apple's step, CEO Daniel Ek said in a conversation with investors when presenting the quarterly figures that price increases had recently been implemented in numerous markets.

Spotify would like to implement an increase, especially in the USA, and will now discuss this with partners in the music industry.

Looking ahead to the next year, he is confident.

If competitors raise their prices, Spotify generally does this because, among other things, they have the lowest bounce rate among subscribers and then probably do better in comparison.

The Swedes will present their figures for the fourth quarter of 2022 on January 31.

There have always been calls for price increases from the music industry in the past, with the argument that the range of services has grown steadily and the prices for permanent access to millions and millions of songs are very cheap anyway.

All services pay around two-thirds of their sales to the rights holders of the songs available on their platforms.

A total of around 80 percent of the distributions go to the recording, i.e. they go to labels, distributors and performers.

The other 20 percent goes to the authors' side with publishers, songwriters and composers.

Distance to Spotify

Amazon has more than 200 million Prime subscribers.

For these, the group last increased the monthly price for the music subscription from EUR 7.99 to EUR 8.99 in July.

At the beginning of November, Amazon also expanded the music offering available free of charge in the Prime service.

Since then, all around 100 million from the Amazon Music range as well as a number of podcasts can be heard here without advertising.

However, apart from up to 1550 song strong playlists per user only in shuffle mode.

As far as subscriber numbers are concerned, Amazon and Apple have been tight-lipped for quite some time.

The music services of the groups are part of the overall portfolio of services.

Most recently, Amazon announced in early 2020 that it had around 55 million music users – including the free Prime offer.

Apple had “more than 60 million” subscribers in June 2019.

Youtube reported more than 80 million subscribers in mid-November 2022, Youtube Music and Youtube Premium combined.

Market leader Spotify had 195 million paying users as of the end of the last quarter.

According to the British analysis company Midia Research, Apple Music had 84.7 million subscribers and Amazon 82.2 million in the first half of 2022.

Spotify counted 182 million subscribers after the second quarter of 2022.