Confirming recent rumors, Amazon this week announced that it will begin giving its Amazon Prime customers bundled access to streaming video services from other providers. According to the Amazon press release the company's new "streaming partners program" involves offering Prime users access to services including Showtime, Starz, A+E Network, AMC, and more than a dozen other partners.
At first glimpse this doesn't appear to be a big deal, since Amazon's simply directing customers to streaming services already available elsewhere for the same price (with I believe the exception of Starz, which is only available traditionally to paying cable customers). But anonymous sources tell
Recode the goal is ultimately for Amazon to bundle services at a discount from what users would pay elsewhere:
quote:
But people briefed on Amazon’s plans say the company intends to package some of the services it is selling individually into different bundles, presumably at a discount from the normal per-channel price. So that could be interesting. So is the notion that it’s using Prime as a way to sell other third-party services — a new idea for Amazon.
Until then the news is a bit of a snoozer, though the potential's there for something interesting. We're still waiting for ISPs, many of which have been
doing something similar in selling services like Hulu at no discount, to start offering users some kind of promotional pricing.