Analysts with Cowen estimate that more than 49 million households in the U.S. subscribe to the Prime loyalty program, and that could speed the spread of Amazon’s new premium music streaming service.

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Amazon.com’s new premium streaming music service could quickly become a hit as it builds upon the popularity of the Prime ecosystem — and that of the Echo, an artificial intelligence-enabled speaker.

Analysts with Cowen estimate that more than 49 million households in the U.S. subscribe to the Prime loyalty program, which costs $99 a year and includes perks ranging from video streaming to guaranteed two-day shipping.

That huge base of users has made Amazon Prime Music, a bare-bones music streaming service included among the Prime perks, surprisingly successful.

Sixteen percent of respondents to a Cowen survey said they listened to Prime Music, more than the number of listeners who paid for Spotify or Apple Music, or any other paid music source, except for satellite radio.

The caveat for that comparison is that Prime Music isn’t really a paid service, because it comes bundled into the Prime smorgasbord of perks. Amazon Prime Music is particularly popular among adults older than 35, Cowen found.

The stand-alone service unveiled Wednesday, dubbed Amazon Music Unlimited, costs Prime members $8 a month, or $79 a year when paid upfront. That’s cheaper than other music streaming services such as Spotify, which charge around $10 per month.

The new service is also custom-made to interact with Alexa, the artificial intelligence software that powers the popular Echo devices. The combination of the new pricing model and the innovation in the way the music streaming service interacts with users “does move the needle” in a field full of entrenched players, says James McQuivey, an analyst with research firm Forrester.

McQuivey says Apple struggled to reach about 17 million users for its music service, still lagging behind market leader Spotify.

The Seattle behemoth “will have an easier time catching up to Apple’s 17 million users” than Apple did carving its market niche, he speculates, because “you have a lot of people already in a paying relationship with Amazon.”

Also, given the popularity of Echo devices, “it definitely has the potential to suck up a lot of Spotify users,” although Spotify can also be used on the Echo, McQuivey adds.

There is lots of overlap between subscribers of premium music services and the Prime program. About 70 percent of subscribers to Spotify’s premium service were Prime members, and so were 75 percent of Apple Music’s subscribers, Cowen said in a report Wednesday.

“While Amazon Music Unlimited’s impact on the current music landscape is unknown, given Amazon Prime’s massive scale, it’s reasonable to assume it could take share,” Cowen analysts wrote.