Freevee: Amazon wants to discontinue free streaming service

If you want to stream series and films and don’t want to pay a penny, services such as Freevee have so far been the perfect choice. Now Amazon is apparently planning to discontinue its own free service.

Is Freevee moving to Prime Video?

Amazon is not really making friends at the moment when it comes to its own streaming services. The tech company has been heavily criticized in recent days for its poor communication regarding the ad-financed subscription to Amazon Prime Video. The critical voices are unlikely to die down now. Finally, there is bad news for Freevee users. Until now, the streaming service has enabled completely free streaming, which was only financed by advertising.

This is the conclusion drawn in a report by Adweek. The trade magazine cites trustworthy sources. However, the tech group does not want to completely dissolve the service. Instead, it is to be merged into the paid streaming service Prime Video. According to the report, this is likely to happen in the second quarter. The reason for this could be the introduction of another subscription model. As Prime Video offers some of the same content as Freevee, the parallel existence of the two services would no longer have made much sense.

Prime Video with a new subscription strategy

In the background, Amazon now seems to be changing the structure of Prime Video. Now that two subscription models already exist with the distinction between ad-free and ad-financed versions, a third model could be added with Freevee. This could then allow you to enjoy Prime Video completely free of charge. However, you will then have to put up with ad breaks as usual. These should then also be much more extensive than is the case with the “normal” ad-financed version of Prime Video.

For customers of the streaming service, however, this should bring more clarity to the previously rather nebulous subscription models. After all, many have asked themselves why they should still use Prime Video at all if they have to put up with ad breaks despite paying monthly. Using the completely free streaming service from Freevee would of course be a more obvious choice for many. For Amazon, this also means that the ad-free version could always be advertised within the streaming service.

After Adweek contacted Amazon, the tech company responded with a completely different story. Freevee is by no means to be canceled. How credible the company’s statements are is open to doubt. After all, the axing would be a logical continuation of the current cost-cutting strategy. Amazon has already indicated several times that it wants to review the marketing budget for Freevee. By integrating it into Prime Video, the tech company would save on this item and thus kill several birds with one stone.