Amazon Music - Evidence of a Monopoly or Casual Customers?

One more perspective on the Federal Trade Commission antitrust case against Amazon.

We can’t help but think some of that case may look at how Amazon uses its hardware products to limit competing products and services. Two weeks ago we looked at US market share for smart speakers, and last week we analyzed how successfully the three smart speaker platforms have reached into users’ homes. Here, we consider how Amazon might influence services purchased for use on smart speakers, specifically streaming music.

We analyze how Amazon Echo owners use various paid streaming music services. Amazon has two proprietary services, Prime Music, a somewhat limited service which is part of the Prime membership bundle of services, and Amazon Music Unlimited which is a standard, comprehensive paid streaming service. Both compete with Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music (Google), among others.

We used our semi-annual survey of smart speaker owners to make these comparisons. Amazon Echo owners appear to favor Amazon music services. Among Amazon Echo owners, about one-third reported using Amazon Prime music and 14% Amazon Music Unlimited (Chart 1) This is twice the penetration of these services on Google Home and Apple HomePod.