As we learnedJuly 6, Amazon will celebrate its 20th anniversary (lord, I'm old) next week with Prime Day, a super-sale extravaganza the company says will rival Black Friday.
Today, we learned that Prime Day, July 15, will include the Prime Music "Listen for a Chance to Win" contest (sexy name, no?), which has a grand prize of a $25,000 Amazon gift card. (Note to self: See if Amazon sells cars .)
Designed to encourage Amazon Prime subscribers to remember that Prime Music exists, the contest will automatically generate an entry for you when you "play a song from Prime Music for any length of time during the Sweepstakes Period from [your] Amazon.com account using any computer, tablet or mobile device."
Not a subscriber, or can't be bothered to switch away from Spotify? You can also enter by sending "a 3x5 card with your name, address, e-mail address and phone number to: Amazon Prime Music 'Listen for a Chance to Win' Sweepstakes, P.O. Box 6009, Morton Grove, IL 60053."
This isn't the first time a company has resorted to a bit of reward-style bribery to attract eyeballs (or in this case earholes). Microsoft, for example, continues to offer a points-powered reward system for users of its Bing search engine.
Hopefully Amazon's sweepstakes will draw a ton more traffic to Prime, which in turn will enable Amazon to offer a larger music library. Since its arrival just over a year ago, the service has been dinged for its comparatively anemic selection: "over a million" songs, versus 20 million-plus catalogs from the likes of Apple Music and Spotify.
In addition to the aforementioned grand prize, the Prime Music sweepstakes will award 13 gift cards ranging from $1,000 to $20,000. Yeah, I think I can spare a few minutes for a shot at one of those.