Amazon announces add-on subscriptions for Prime Video customers

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By Larry Banks

Earlier this week e-commerce giant Amazon announced its Streaming Partners Program which (at an additional cost) will allow Prime Video customers to add additional streaming services that are usually hosted separately.

Some of the first partners include companies such as AMC, Showtime, Ring TV Boxing, Starz, and the A+E Network. In many cases, paying the additional fees will work out cheaper than a separate, standalone subscription to those channels. Showtime costs $8.99 per month from Amazon for example, which is $2 less than a separate plan.

The reduced cost is possible perhaps because Amazon takes care of customer service and billing, as well as delivering the TV streams via its own streaming delivery infrastructure.

Customers will however have to pay an additional fee on top of their Amazon Prime subscription – which currently costs $99 per year – but the benefits include universal search across channels, “X-Ray” support, unified playlists, as well as voice search capabilities on Amazon’s Fire TV devices.

Amazon is also thought to be soon releasing a new tvOS app (for the Apple TV) for its Prime Video service. That would be a rather interesting scenario where the video app becomes its own content hub on Apple TV, possible drawing viewers away from Apple’s own App Store titles and revenue (if in-app purchases are supported). Otherwise, users would be paying via the web or on their devices, cutting Apple out completely.

SOURCE: AppleInsider.

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