Amazon's music streaming service has grown by more than 70% in the past year, reportedly, making it the fastest growing music service yet. It has even beat out the growth of Spotify and Apple Music, the two behemoths in the playing field.
It's unclear whether this includes trial versions, paid users and free users, but the rate of growth is still fast, regardless. Amazon's current subscriber count to its music services sits at about 32 million. This is significantly lesser compared to Apple Music's 60 million and Spotify's impressive 100 million.
It seems that Amazon's growth is greatly accelerated by its smart speakers. The popularity of Alexa devices has, in a way, contributed to the service's growth. While it is possible to play music through rival services on Alexa, the default is Amazon Music. Unless you specify to Alexa that you want music played through Spotify or Apple Music, Alexa will default to Amazon Music.
As it turns out, with the way this works, Amazon isn't targeting the users that actually use Apple Music or Spotify, it is instead targeting older users. In the words of the Amazon Executive, "For the industry to reach its full potential, we can’t just look at 15 to 22-year-olds." Midia data shows that 14% of Amazon Music users are older than 55.