BEZOS: AMAZON MUSIC USERS DOUBLED IN 2017

Amazon Prime has 100m subscribers, a number CEO Jeff Bezos has announced after keeping the tally secret for 13 years.

Bezos included the number in his annual letter to shareholders within which he emphasized Amazon’s long-term commitment to Echo speakers and Alexa. He said "tens of millions" of Echo devices have been sold. “Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa were the best-selling products across all of Amazon—across all categories and all manufacturers.”

As for Amazon Music, he said it “now has tens of millions of paid customers. Amazon Music Unlimited, our on-demand, ad-free offering, expanded to more than 30 new countries in 2017, and membership has more than doubled over the past six months.”

He also noted that Prime memberships, which had a record number of sign-ups in 2017, are being sold overseas. Amazon shipped more than 5 billion items with Prime worldwide last year.

“People have a voracious appetite for a better way, and yesterday’s ‘wow’ quickly becomes today’s ‘ordinary’,” he wrote. “I see that cycle of improvement happening at a faster rate than ever before. It may be because customers have such easy access to more information than ever before – in only a few seconds and with a couple taps on their phones, customers can read reviews, compare prices from multiple retailers, see whether something’s in stock, find out how fast it will ship or be available for pick-up, and more.

"These examples are from retail, but I sense that the same customer empowerment phenomenon is happening broadly across everything we do at Amazon and most other industries as well. You cannot rest on your laurels in this world. Customers won’t have it.”