Amazon has launched a streaming music service that comes free with its $99-a-year Prime membership program, but offers a smaller selection of recent hits than rival services like Apple's Beats Music and Spotify.

The features, which has been called "Prime Music," allows subscribers to download or stream over a million songs without added fees or interruptions from advertisements.

The service is just one of the many steps the retail website has taken this year to broaden the appeal of its Prime membership program.

Prime, which includes perks like free two-day shipping, is available for $99 after Amazon increased the price of the service in 2013.

Spotify and Beats both offer over 20 million songs, something that Prime Music won't be able to claim, at least for the time being, according to Reuters.

Amazon will also have fewer new songs and its service won't include songs from Universal Music Group Inc's catalog, which includes songs from pop acts like Lady Gaga and Kanye West.

"If there are a few tracks you want to buy, the cost of doing that in our store will be dramatically less than paying $120 a year for, frankly, a lot of music people don't listen to," Amazon's head of digital music, Steve Boom said in an interview when addressing the service's shortcomings, according to Reuters.

Amazon claims that its own data shows a "substantial" portion of the 25 million to 30 million songs available on its website are never purchased. He failed to elaborate more on that statement however, according to Reuters.

Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and other smaller labels have signed on to the Amazon service.

Amazon will have to wait up to six months after songs are released to add them to its service in some of its deals. In other cases, Amazon will be able to add new songs as soon as they are released.

Later on this month company CEO Jeff Bezos is expected to unveil Amazon's first smartphone during an event in Seattle.

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