Amazon Teams Up With Universal, Warner To Remaster Thousands of Songs

Amazon Music (AMZN) has announced a partnership with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group to remaster thousands of songs and albums to Ultra High Definition, upgrading the digital streaming audio quality of these songs to the highest available.

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“For the first time, fans will be able to stream music from artists across a broad range of genres and eras, with all of the depth, vibrancy, and emotion from their original recordings, launching exclusively on Amazon Music HD” the company cheered.

In addition, music from artists including Eagles, Elton John, Linkin Park, Tom Petty and Ariana Grande, has been remixed in 3D Audio formats including Dolby Atmos and Sony 360RA.

With Amazon Music HD, customers can currently stream 5 million songs in Ultra HD (better than CD quality), as well as 60 million lossless High Definition songs. All titles resulting from this Ultra HD music partnership will be delivered in 24 bit and 96 kHz or 192 kHz, says Amazon.

Amazon Music HD is currently available to stream in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan, with Prime members charged $12.99/month, Amazon customers $14.99/month, and current subscribers an extra $5/month.

With 38 back-to-back buy ratings in the last three months, AMZN scores a firm Strong Buy Street consensus. That’s with an average analyst price target of $3,746, indicating 20% upside potential lies ahead. Shares are already up 69% year-to-date.

Needham analyst Laura Martin recently reiterated her buy rating on Amazon with a $3,700 price target. “We believe that AMZN invests billions of dollars every quarter in growth initiatives, which understates its near term FCF [free cash flow] and value, especially in light of its long track record of building valuable new businesses from these investments” she explained.

Meanwhile Pivotal Research analyst Michael Levine has just published a new Street-high price target on AMZN of $4,500 (44% upside potential). Describing Amazon as “the best mega cap on a multiyear basis”, Levine argues that the e-commerce giant’s ad business should not be underestimated.

“Amazon advertising is only ~5% of revenues, but is a far greater contributor to overall non-AWS EBIT margins than the street recognizes,” Levine said. “If advertising was viewed as a stand-along business unit, it would represent well north of 300% of 2020E non-AWS EBIT.” (See Amazon stock analysis on TipRanks)