Amazon hat mit ‚Subscribe With Amazon‘ einen Marktplatz für Abos (US only zunächst) vorgestellt, in dem vom New Yorker bis Dropbox alles vertreten sein kann, was digital abonniert werden kann.
Wie ich das mit diesen Dingen mache, habe ich dieses neue Angebot von Amazon bei den Early Moves analysiert:
First, some context:
- Digital services, aside from ad-financed ones, are mainly making money with subscriptions, mobile apps included. So, subscriptions are a very strongly groing ‘category’.
- Media consumption is moving towards subscriptions. (Netflix, Spotify) Amazon realized this a long time ago and acted accordingly: Amazon Video, Kindle Unlimited.
- Subscriptions can be very powerful: They change the cash flow and thus the calculations and thus can change dramatically the underlying business model.
- Subscriptions can be bundled, as Amazon did with Amazon Prime.
Now, for Subscribe With Amazon within that context:
- Imagine a layer connecting all kinds of subscriptions. At first this may look just like a payment service. And it sure is! For consumers ‘Subscribe With Amazon’ can become a (the?) place to see all subscriptions.
- This is already a nice, low-effort tax model for Amazon. Amazon already has significant scale on the consumer side making Amazon a natural choice for a lot of subscription services.
- But of course, this becomes interesting once Amazon moves away from just providing a place for selling and buying subscriptions and goes into organizing/aggregating mode: Amazon can bundle subscriptions and sell those bundles. As bundles do, everyone wins if done correctly: The services find more customers, the customers get services for less money, and Amazon, well, the company gets to collect its marketplace tax.
- This becomes also possible by virtue of getting market data to analyze. Which Amazon already has in troves and will get more so with this marketplace. It is market insights no one else has. Amazon can (and will) use that to package and price bundles accordingly with partners who will jump on board. And, again, make no mistake: A lot will as this will make a lot of sense for most subscription providers.
- Now, add Amazon Prime into the mix. What third-party services might Amazon add in the future to Prime? What “Prime bundles” or “Prime subsriptions” may Amazon introduce? Those could be discounts and/or premier tiers at other services. As with the Amazon Marketplace, Prime become the flywheel for ‘Subscribe With Amazon’. And even more so, as Prime itself is already a subscription it lends itself well to get connected with other subscriptions. There are already at launch the first exclusive offers for Prime members available: Fitstar by Fitbit and Texture Premium (an aggregator of digital magazine content) use this, for example.
- Now think about stuff like meal-kit subscriptions à la Blue Apron or the fashion subscription Rent the Runway Unlimited within this new context.
Amazon legt hier gerade die Basis, um sehr viel Richtung Abos machen zu können. Da Abonnements neben Werbung das wichtigste Erlösmodell online werden, wenn sie es nicht bereits sind (ich würde sagen, sie sind es bereits), macht Amazon hier gerade ein mächtiges Feld auf.
