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Amazon in-house production »LOL« on Prime (with Palina Rojinski, Hazel Brugger, Michelle Hunziker, Christoph Maria Herbst, Abdelkarim, Axel Stein, Olaf Schubert, Anke Engelke, Carolin Kebekus and Mirco Nontschew)
Photo:
Frank Zauritz / dpa
The US giant Amazon plans to launch a free video streaming service in Germany later this year.
So far, there is already the paid streaming service Prime Video in Germany.
Also the free IMDb TV service in the US and UK.
“In the course of this year” a German branch is to start, as Amazon is now reporting.
In addition, on April 27, IMDb TV will be renamed Amazon Freevee.
The start in Germany will then take place under the new name.
The trade journal »W&V« had previously reported on this.
The IMDb brand is also known as a film platform on the Internet where the production data of numerous film productions can be found.
New train in cut-throat competition
Amazon Freevee will be financed by advertising revenue.
Head, Ashraf Alkarmi, said customers are increasingly streaming ad-supported content, "and we built Amazon Freevee to bring them coveted content with limited ads." will be significantly expanded at Freevee over the course of the year.
In Germany, numerous national and international providers are competing for streaming customers.
Sometimes there is talk of the "streaming wars" because international giants such as Netflix, Disney, Apple and Amazon are fighting cut-throat competition here.
Broadcasting groups such as RTL Germany and ProSiebenSat.1 also have their own streaming platforms, as do the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF.
So far, Amazon has only been active in this business segment with the Prime service.
It combines the streaming subscription with better delivery options for in-house shipping and a heavily reduced version of the audio streaming offer.
Competitors such as Netflix or Disney+ have not yet offered free access to their offerings.
mamk/dpa