On-demand streaming music service Rdio is teaming up with Amazon to let new customers pay for the music subscription service via Amazon Payments.
This lets anyone with an Amazon account sign up and pay for Rdio via that account, saving them the trouble of providing their credit card info to Rdio directly. Seeing as new users must provide credit card information when signing up to the service, even though there’s a free trial period, offering Amazon Payments as an option save a whole lot of keystrokes. That’s always been a concern for subscription music service providers, but it’s not clear what the bigger barrier is-the keystrokes necessary to enter in credit card information when first using the service, or the fact that any payment info is required at all.
Subscription services have integrated their billing with that of mobile operators partners, such as Rhapsody with partner Verizon Wireless, but that hasn’t exactly led to an explosion of subscribers. Still, lowering the bar to entry even a little may help in customer acquisition and certainly can’t hurt.
