Amazon today announced the opening of its subscription service marketplace, where monthly fee-based services can fork over 30-percent of their profits in exchange for a crack at Amazon’s customers. The store has a lot of services already — some of which seem weirdly out of place.
The store is admittedly pretty robust at the moment. You’ve got Princeton Review education courses, Disney Story Central, Dropbox, several meal prep apps — a nice variety of services to manage in one place. According to Amazon’s statement, the store aims to provide customers “with a simple way to purchase and manage their subscriptions.” That means you’d be able to view all your services in one place and pay for them with your Amazon payment method.
The biggest draw is magazine and newspaper subscriptions, if the sheer number of them is anything to go by. Everything from the Wall Street Journal to Entertainment Weekly has reviews complaining about the price of a sub.
That said, there are some weird services you wouldn’t expect to find in an Amazon subscription marketplace. There’s a roadside assistance app, and a “find live concerts” app that costs $25 per month.
Most unusually, several movies turn up under the “Subscribe with Amazon” banner, despite the fact they don’t have subscription prices — they can be rented from Amazon Video, but the buttons are completely different. So it looks like there are still a few kinks to be worked out.
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