There's fierce competition out there in the streaming music space, and Amazon isn't playing around. After the company announced that it would make Amazon Music free on Android, iOS, Fire TV, and the web, Spotify's stock price took a 5% dive while Amazon's went up nearly 0.5%.

Prior to today's announcement, Amazon already offered free Amazon Music playlists and stations for Alexa devices, such as its Echo line of speakers. Now, the company is just spreading it out to more devices on the Android, iOS, and Fire TV platforms without requiring a Prime membership or an Amazon Music Unlimited subscription. Customers in the US, UK, and Germany can sign up for this free service without having to store their credit card information.

The introduction of a free, ad-supported music tier puts Amazon in direct competition with Spotify, Google Play Music, Pandora, and other similar services. Amazon will offer access to over 2 million songs through ad-supported stations and playlists, which is far less than Spotify's 40 million.

If you'd rather have ad-free music, Amazon offers two choices: an Amazon Prime membership that includes access to the same 2 million songs without ads and at no additional cost, or a subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited for $7.99/month for 50 million songs. Currently, Amazon offers a limited $0.99 deal for four months of Amazon Music Unlimited if you sign up right now.

With Amazon comfortably dominating the smart speaker market, the addition of free Amazon Music is likely to attract even more people into its smart home ecosystem.

If you're curious about what Amazon has to offer, then tap on the link below and start streaming.

Source: Amazon, Reuters