I’m not sure of the film or TV show where the chant of zombie acceptance “One-of-us, one-of-us” originated, but it’s safe to say that the recitation’s been officially co-opted by the renaissance, gigantic, and borderline creepy companies of Google and Amazon. Maybe you don’t want your Gmail account to be a direct reflection of your (totally masculine!) interest in needlepoint, demonstrated through your YouTube habits, but the coaxing by Google to submit to “One Account” becomes harder to resist with each prompt. Similarly, I don’t really have a need for printer paper watermarked with My Little Pony characters, but I know where I’d look first if I was interested: shittin’ Amazon. They have everything, after all.
And given Amazon’s rather unique business model and state as a retailer, it’d be a mistake to consider their unveiling of Prime Music as something resembling a ring-entering with Spotify or Pandora. Though albums and songs will undoubtedly be added moving forward, Prime Music starts with a paltry 1 million songs (reminder: Spotify has roughly 20x that amount), with Universal Music Group being a noteworthy holdout pending negotiations, and reports arising of music released less than six months ago also being absent from the service… for some reason.
So the idea isn’t for Prime Music to be a solitary draw, at least at first. The idea is for Prime Music to be a worthwhile addition to Amazon Prime, which features expedited shipping on millions of items, and gives you access to Amazon Instant Video, all for $99/year. Prime Music is also ad-free and features a surprising amount of supposedly “expert-programmed” playlists. I don’t know, is it enough to bend you forward in a bow to your Amazon overlords?
Check out the full press release here.
• Amazon Prime Music: http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=8335758011
