Amazon‘s free streaming service, Freevee, is shutting down. After denying reports earlier this year that the free streaming service will close down, Amazon has now confirmed that the plan is to bring the service to an end over the course of the next few weeks.
The confirmation of the closure of the service comes from Deadline. In the report, Amazon confirmed that all of Freevee’s content will be integrated into Prime Video in the future.
“We have built Prime Video into a first-stop entertainment destination where customers can personalize their viewing experience by streaming exclusive Prime member entertainment produced by Amazon MGM Studios, licensed movies and series, content from other services as an add-on subscription, live sports, blockbuster movies and series to rent or buy, FAST channels and the complete Amazon Freevee content offering,” Amazon said in a statement to Deadline.
Freevee, originally IMDb TV, launched five years ago. The free, ad-supported market has expanded massively since then, with consumers now able to choose from a variety of free services. Just this week, for example, DirecTV launched its free live TV service, MyFree DirecTV.
Regardless of the increased level of competition, it has seemed like Amazon was slowly preparing to close down Freevee. Amazon has slowly been expanding another competing free service, Fire TV Channels, with the free app providing access to 100s of free live channels on Fire TV devices. In addition, Prime Video users already had access to all of the content available for free through Freevee.
For some users, this is likely to mean they may not notice the phasing out of Freevee. Prime Video subscribers will still have access to all of the same free content, and non-Prime Video subscribers will still be able to access a wide selection of FAST content at no cost.
Leave a Reply