Amazon Prime adds new exclusive music with Amazon Acoustics

31 Jul 2015

Amazon continues to beef up its Prime service with plenty of new original content. Having significantly added to the video offering in recent months, today (31 July) the company unveiled some exclusive new music for subscribers who like their tunes strummed on an acoustic guitar.

Amazon Acoustics is a collection 0f 30 all-new recordings, eight of which are original compositions from the likes of Deer Tick, Ron Sexsmith and Jill Andrews. The rest are covers, some of which sound very, let’s say, interesting – like Surfer Blood doing a rendition of Outkast’s Hey Ya!, Michelle Branch covering Radiohead’s Creep, and The Walkmen’s Peter Matthew Bauer jumping on St Vincent’s Prince Johnny.

“We are always looking for unique ways to make Prime Music the best destination for our listeners – offering original, exclusive recordings is one way we’re raising the bar on the music listening experience,” said Steve Boom, VP of digital music for Amazon.

While this is not Amazon’s first exclusive music release, the company has in general held back on its original audio content, particularly when compared to its video offering, where they’ve gone all-out to close the gap on rivals Netflix. Series exclusive to Prime include TransparentCatastrophe, Bosch and Alpha House. Just this week it announced that former Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have signed an exclusive contract with Amazon Prime Video to produce and star in a new motoring show for Prime.

Meanwhile, Spike Lee’s latest work Chi-Raq will be Amazon Studios’ first original movie. Amazon Studios was launched by the company alongside Warner Bros in 2010 to develop TV shows, movies and comics. Amazon Original Movies was established just last January to produce and acquire all-new movies for theatrical release that can then be distributed exclusively for Prime members.

Acoustic guitarist image via Shutterstock

Dean Van Nguyen was a contributor to Silicon Republic

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