Hey, Alexa, are you prepared for battle? Oh good, because Amazon has entered the music-streaming wars. After months of speculation, today Amazon officially announced and launched its very own paid music-streaming service, Amazon Music Unlimited, which might sound like a derivative of the many other streaming services on the market. But wait a second: This one, like everything on Amazon, comes at a steal if you’re already a loyal Amazonian. Prime has always offered a limited number of songs for its users to stream, but now, for an additional $8 a month, you’ll get full access to tens of millions of songs compared to the paltry 2 million you’ve been enjoying. And if you spend your nights begging your Echo speaker (a.k.a. your girlfriend Alexa) to love you à la Grace Gummer in Mr. Robot (no judgment here), then you’ll get to use Unlimited for $4 a month and it already comes fully paired with your speaker. (The actual fancy Echo will run you $180, though there are cheaper versions.) But say you can’t be so easily bribed: Well then, Unlimited comes at the standard $10 a month, like all the other big services. Hear that echo in the distance? It’s just Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal quietly panicking.
