Brief: Amazon Prime Music Reveals A Warning To Other Product Categories

In June 2014, Amazon.com announced the arrival of its Prime Music service. Just like with the company's Prime Instant Video service, the music service is free to Prime members who have already chosen to pay $99 a year for free shipping. The move is good offense for Amazon because digital platforms derive their power from the minutes of user attention they can capture and music provides one of the most friction-free paths to daily customer engagement. The lesson for the music business is simple: Music is no longer a product on its own. It is instead a feature in somebody else's product. The warning for CMOs in other industries is similar: Your product could easily become an ingredient in somebody else's product portfolio soon.