Amazon Music is fading. Does Amazon nonetheless care?
If the worldwide music streaming financial system is a race, Amazon Music sat down someplace across the begin of 2024, and hasn’t gotten again up once more.
In response to the most recent stats from Midia Analysis, Amazon’s international market share of paying music subscribers (by quantity) on the shut of final yr was simply 8.5%.
This, in flip, implies that Amazon’s complete music subscriber base stood at 78.3 million. That quantity wasn’t simply down year-over-year when it comes to market share – it was down in actual phrases.
Midia’s 2020–2025 numbers (obtain right here) recommend that Amazon misplaced round 400,000 international subscribers in 2025, regardless of the general international market rising by 84.3 million.
In the identical yr – and in stark distinction to Amazon Music’s decline – Spotify added 27 million subs.
2025 was the most recent low level in an ongoing hunch for Amazon, whose music subscriber base, per Midia’s numbers, has remained flat, or down, for 2 years straight.
As you possibly can see above, Midia’s international figures embody the main music streaming suppliers in two areas – China and Russia – the place international DSPs don’t are inclined to function. (Apple Music is lively in China, for instance, however Amazon, Spotify, and YouTube aren’t.)
It’s subsequently value analyzing how the information modifications when you take away the dominant DSPs in these markets (Yandex Music in Russia; Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music in China).
Doing so provides us a clearer image of music streaming’s aggressive dynamic throughout these international areas – i.e., in every single place exterior China/Russia – the place the ‘huge weapons’ (Spotify, Amazon, Apple, YouTube) are competing head-to-head.
The outcomes would possibly shock you.
They present that Spotify and YouTube have loved an astonishing rise in market share over the previous half-decade. For Amazon Music and Apple Music, nonetheless, the proof is miserable.
Strip out the main Chinese language and Russian DSPs, and Midia’s numbers recommend that Spotify gained practically 4 share factors of market share within the 2020–2025 interval.
YouTube Music (bundled with YouTube Premium) noticed an much more spectacular leap: up greater than seven full share factors from 9.5% in This autumn 2020 to 16.8% in This autumn 2025 (once more, with the Chinese language and Russian giants stripped out).
However simply have a look at the collapse of Apple and Amazon: Apple, down 5 full share factors (2020–2025) – Amazon, down simply over three share factors.
In essence, the eight mixed factors of market share misplaced by Apple Music and Amazon Music throughout this era have been stolen by Spotify and/or YouTube Music – who’ve then devoured some extra market share from smaller rivals.
Apple and Amazon would little question level to YouTube and Spotify’s apparent benefit in music streaming, notably in high-potential international markets: they every function a kind of ‘free’ tier, and may upsell customers into subscription from that base.
But there have been greater than 2.5 billion lively Apple gadgets on the earth on the shut of final yr, however solely round 116 million Apple Music subscribers (per Midia’s figures).
In the meantime, Amazon boasts 250 million paying Prime clients globally, and a few 310 million lively customers.
Is the race already over for Amazon Music – and does its mum or dad firm really care?
These findings clearly level to tough questions for Apple Music, the place a considerable shift in technique could also be required if it’s to have any hope of successfully competing with Spotify and YouTube Music.
(In response to my learn of Midia’s numbers, Apple Music gained round 5.6 million subscribers in 2025, a slight acceleration on the 4.9 million enhance seen in 2024. Apple’s subscriber base is nudging upward – however its market share retains dropping.)
For Amazon Music, nonetheless, issues are extra existential. Per Midia’s information, it’s shedding subs in actual phrases, and that international market share of 8.5% (and declining) seems to be in peril of sinking beneath the ‘also-ran’ threshold of 5% quickly sufficient.
What’s extra, its mum or dad firm hardly appears to prioritize Amazon Music in any respect.
Simply take a peek at what number of Amazon press releases have talked about Amazon Music thus far this yr.
In response to the agency’s official US press web site, there have been a grand complete of three. Two concern Latin music stay streams carried on Amazon Prime Video; the opposite declares a podcast from Oprah Winfrey.
Additional proof of Amazon’s disinterest at a company degree is there when you search for it.
I’ve reviewed transcripts of Amazon’s quarterly earnings calls over the previous few years to tally mentions of/references to Amazon Music, Amazon Music Limitless, or Amazon Music Prime.
Again in FY 2018, Amazon’s higher-ups have been boasting of “tens of tens of millions of paid clients” for Amazon Music, whereas suggesting that Amazon Music Limitless was “develop[ing] in a short time.”
Within the years since, these providers have gotten far much less company consideration, with latest earnings name mentions of “music” sometimes referring to person conduct on Alexa.
Up to now in FY 2026, two earnings calls deep, the likes of Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy, and Investor Relations head Dave Fildes, have made zero point out of Amazon Music.
Certainly, the final solitary point out got here in Could 2025, as Jassy reeled off a protracted listing of platforms on which Amazon’s advert gross sales group might flog stock.
The priorities of Amazon’s company leaders clearly level elsewhere – notably towards financial alternatives that don’t all the time tessellate with the music trade’s worldview.
Essentially the most intensive latest point out of “music” on Amazon earnings calls got here in February 2026 (This autumn 2025), when Jassy beamed that Amazon Net Providers (AWS) was booming, largely because of demand from AI.
AWS gross sales progress, he famous, had accelerated to 24% YoY, representing a “$142 billion annualized run charge enterprise.”
Pressed for case research examples of AWS’s success, Jassy acknowledged: “Suno is a very cool instance of an AWS buyer that’s sort of reinvented how one can write music and construct music.”
“Suno is a very cool instance of an AWS buyer that’s sort of reinvented how one can write music and construct music.”
Andrew Jassy, Amazon, February 2026
Suno, after all, continues to be sued for alleged mass copyright infringement by Amazon Music’s two largest rightsholder companions, Sony Music Leisure and Common Music Group.
Elsewhere, Common (amongst others) can also be suing AI behemoth Anthropic, alleging that it illegally mass-ingested music lyrics to coach Claude’s fashions.
So far, Amazon has invested $13 billion in Anthropic, with commitments that would push that determine past $30 billion.
Not fairly burning books – however not precisely ‘safeguarding’ them both
One in every of UMG’s key accusations in its Anthropic lawsuit is that, to coach its fashions, the AI agency illegally pirated music on a considerable scale.
Final week, 404 Media blew a comparative state of affairs extensive open.
The publication was contacted by a rare-book vendor who had seen sudden bulk orders coming in – at volumes and turnaround speeds remarkable within the commerce – from nameless consumers.
By hiding an Apple AirTag in a single such cargo – an order for practically 1,000 books – 404 Media traced it to an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Amazon group that runs the operation there’s referred to as VGT3.
Its employees, posting on-line, have spelled out their day by day activity: slicing the binding off these uncommon books and scanning their contents. The books don’t survive this course of.
Requested concerning the operation, an Amazon spokesperson stated: “Amazon purchases books via industrial channels to assist develop and enhance the services our clients use.”
In follow: Amazon is shopping for giant portions of out-of-print books, slicing off their spines, scanning the free pages for AI coaching information, and dumping the stays.
Destroying books isn’t incidental to this course of.
In a June 2025 ruling in Bartz v. Anthropic, District Choose William Alsup discovered that purchasing a print ebook, scanning the pages, and discarding the paper unique amounted to “truthful use” underneath US regulation – exactly as a result of the digital file changed the bodily copy relatively than including to it.
Amazon seems to have absorbed the lesson that Anthropic, its $13 billion investee, discovered in a California courtroom: to maintain the scan authorized, the ebook should meet its finish.
This might be the identical Amazon whose Amazon Music co-issued a press launch with Common Music Group in December 2024, pledging to “work collaboratively to handle, amongst different issues, illegal AI-generated content material.”
The identical PR, as I’ve talked about earlier than, cited Amazon’s “dedication to advancing and safeguarding human artistry.”Music Enterprise Worldwide
