We just told you that iTunes Radio as a standalone app is about to make the music streaming space more crowded. Well according to the Wall Street Journal, it is about to get even more crowded. According to the report, Amazon, “is hoping to offer an on-demand music-streaming service to customers of its Amazon Prime program, but it may limit how much a person can listen to any given song, according to people familiar with the matter.”¹ The last part of that quote is key: “it may limit how much a person can listen to any given song.” According to the same report, Amazon has been looking for ways to increase sales in its MP3 store. This seems to be a perfect approach to this problem. Essentially, by limiting the amount of times a user could listen to the same song, Amazon would encourage these users to buy the song.

This is a strange story for a number of reasons. In what is really an odd approach, the Journal reports that Amazon would pay record companies a flat rate, as opposed to the standard per play payments:

Amazon has told record companies it would pay them out of a fixed pool of money, according to people familiar with the matter, instead of compensating them based on how often users listen to their songs…Billboard, the music industry publication, reported this week that Amazon had offered record labels a total of $30 million.²

Rather than creating a sort of on-demand library like Spotify AB or Beats Music, Amazon is looking to build a sort-of modified Pandora. Rather than increasing the amount of plays with users likes, it seems that it would decrease plays in an attempt to push users to buy the songs:

Amazon’s planned offering would be similar in its aim to Apple‘s iTunes Radio, which serves up music based on a users’ input, like Pandora, but features prominent “Buy” buttons.³

This story is still developing, but it will certainly add some drama to the ever expanding music streaming industry.