MUMBAI: This one is on course to be a hit with music lovers. Global ecommerce and video streaming giant Amazon recently launched its Amazon Prime Music offering in India. The new service is available at no cost to Prime subscribers and for iOS, Android, Desktop Webplayer, Amazon Fire TV sticks and Amazon Echo devices.

Amazon Prime Music features especially expert curated playlists and stations to give music listeners an uninterrupted music listening experience across genres, moods, artists, eras, and activities.

Says Amazon Music India director Sahas Malhotra: “Amazon Prime Music is going to be completely ad free with no visual or audio ads and unlimited offline downloads. Customers will have access to a global catalogue of tens of millions of songs. The main difference between Amazon Prime Music in India and other services is that we have music in multiple Indian languages. When you come to Prime Music for the first time we nudge you to tell us a little about the music that you like and the language in which you would like to listen.”

Malhotra reveals that effort at the backend has gone into categorizing music and on improving the user experience following extensive consumer feedback.

Says he: “We all have different music tastes. There is a sense of pride that listeners have in music that they love and associate. They could be either working out, partying or meditating. So we have allowed subscribers that convenience and you can find music by various moods and activities. Then we get to the music genres. We have gone in for localization. For example, the ‘classical music’ customers in the south have told us that we do not want all genres of classical music clubbed under classical music so we broke it into Carnatic, classical and Hindustani classical. Also, we have looked at our own music services globally. Through our different playlists, you can see the EDM hits in UK, In the Indian section, you can also see Bhangra, Punjabi and Marathi playlists. “

According to Malhotra the idea behind keeping the service ad free was that consumers had referred to it as a pain point. Additionally, a lot of emphasis was paid on user experience and the user interface. He discloses:” What we found was that, on an average a typical Indian customer listens to music in two to three different languages. Here there is a big catalogue of music so how do you still make it easy for him or her to find the music that they really want? Music is all about discovery and it’s also about music preferences. Once you register your self and your wants your browsing experience prioritizes the languages that you want to listen. Content is right in the front and it’s clean. Content is hero.”

And to top it all, discloses Malhotra, Amazon’s Alexa device has been integrated into the Prime Music app. He further elaborates:” Amazon Prime Music has made music listening exciting and fun. There is an Alexa icon, you can just say Alexa ‘I want to listen to Ed Sheeran - Perfect, it will play to that tune. “

Malhotra is excited that the ecommerce giant is going to be pushing Indian music globally to new audiences. That has the potential to bring in new fans – maybe a new generation. That should be music to Indian composers and musicians’ ears.