Amazon is continuing to push its media services worldwide after it expanded its Alexa smart speakers and its standalone Music Unlimited service to an additional 28 countries today.
The company took its Prime Video service global a year ago and last month it rolled a Fire TV Stick for over 100 countries, but now the music component of its entertainment services — which became a standalone service last year — is getting a wider rollout to this new range of countries across South America and Europe. Initial markets for Echo and Music Unlimited include the U.S. and the UK, with India and Japan among others recently added.
The streaming service covers more than 40 million tracks and it is available independently of Amazon’s Prime package — that’s important because Prime isn’t offered in most of these new markets. It works on iOS, Android, Web, Fire TV, PC and Mac. Features that Amazon hope can help it stand out from competitors like Spotify and Apple Music include input via Alexa, support for Amazon smart speakers, curated content and a family plan that supports up to six accounts.
“Music is such an incredible global connector, and with Amazon Music Unlimited we’ve been able to give listeners access to an extensive catalog with the added experience of using their own voice to hear music in so many ways with Alexa,” Steve Boom, VP of Amazon Music, said in a statement.
“Today’s announcement signifies an important moment for Amazon Music Unlimited and our international customers as we continue to offer more music fans all over the world a completely new way to hear expertly curated playlists and songs from their favorite artists,” Boom added.
You can look up the available countries here, but the long list of new additions includes: Belgium, Iceland, Bolivia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Liechtenstein, Chile, Lithuania, Colombia, Luxembourg, Costa Rica, Malta, Cyprus, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador, Poland, Estonia, Portugal, Finland, Slovakia, Greece, Sweden, Hungary and Uruguay.