UPDATED 20:31 EST / DECEMBER 17 2019

EMERGING TECH

Amazon makes (a little) money from Alexa premium content as smart assistant matures

Amazon.com Inc. is starting to make money offering premium content via Alexa as the e-commerce giant’s smart assistant shifts from its “Alexa Everywhere” phase to a maturing product.

According to The Information, Amazon is considering a variety of options going forward for Alexa, including charging for some news and entertainment services. A potential partnership with Spotify Technology SA is also said to be currently being discussed.

Within the so-called “skill revenue” segment, monies generated by add-on features applied to Alexa software from third parties, Amazon has said to have brought in $1.4 million in the first 10 months of this year.

Some of the new initiatives for Alexa have already surfaced. Luminary Media LLC announced today that it will become the first podcast service to sell subscriptions via Alexa.

The service, which offers premium podcasts for $7.99 per month, is integrated into Alexa so users can subscribe by simply saying “Alexa, subscribe to Luminary.” A trial of the service is also available by saying, “Alexa, start my free Luminary trial.”

Subscriptions are integrated with Amazon’s Alexa payments service that uses Amazon’s exit billing platform. According to Nasdaq.com, Amazon takes a 30% cut of all revenue through subscriptions and “skills” signed up to by Alexa users.

Amazon did not confirm the data in The Information report, saying only that “Alexa is a long-term bet for Amazon and we’re as optimistic as ever about its future. We’ve just scratched the surface of what’s possible with Alexa.”

Consumer revenue isn’t Amazon’s only focus for Alexa. The company also beefed up the service’s appeal for business users with the launch of Knowledge Skills Monday.

The service allows users at organizations with Alexa for Business or Alexa for Hospitality services to add spreadsheets containing a range of business data, such as building and employee information, events, product catalogs and so on. That data can then be made accessible to employees via Alexa-enabled devices.

Amazon is also pushing Alexa Voice Service integration into “internet of things” devices. Speaking to SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE during AWS’ re:Invent earlier this month, Dirk Didascalou, vice president of IoT at Amazon Web Services Inc., said that the newly launched AVS Integration for IoT makes it cheap to create devices with Alexa built-in:

Photo: BestAI Assistant/Flickr

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