Should Spotify Be Worried About New Podcast Competitor Amazon?
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced last week that it is buying podcast studio Wondery. The deal reportedly will cost Amazon $300 million and comes on the back of Amazon Music, the company's audio streaming service, starting to host podcasts in September of 2020. With the tech giant entering the podcast industry, investors in Spotify (NYSE: SPOT), a company betting big on the spoken word market, may be worried that Amazon will start taking its market share. Here's why that thinking is misguided.
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Amazon has an interesting media strategy. It has invested heavily in Prime Video, bought the livestreaming platform Twitch, and owns the audiobook subscription service Audible (which, confusingly, you can also listen to podcasts on). Together with Amazon Music, these services have one purpose: To make the Prime subscription a better value proposition. For example, if you are a Prime member, Amazon Music Unlimited (the apples-to-apples competitor of Spotify Premium) costs only $7.99 a month, versus the standard $9.99 a month.
Source Fool.com