Key Takeaways
- Amazon is shutting down Freevee, migrating its content material to Prime Video.
- Freevee titles will stay free to stream with no Prime subscription.
- Amazon is doing this to simplify the viewing expertise for its customers.
Video streaming providers have turn out to be considerably dearer in the previous few years. Fortunately, there are some free choices, with Google TV providing greater than 800 free TV channels. Amazon additionally runs an ad-supported streaming service known as Freevee. Nonetheless, it’s not as fashionable as Prime Video and has confronted a branding problem since its 2019 launch, being renamed a number of occasions inside just a few years. Two years after the final rebrand from IMDb TV, Amazon is ending the branding disaster for good by shutting down Freevee altogether.
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Amazon has confirmed to Deadline that Freevee will shut down over the approaching weeks. It has migrated over 12,000 titles from Freevee’s content material library to Prime Video, together with reveals like Mad Males: Misplaced, Bosh: Legacy, and plenty of Amazon Originals. Any further, all new episodes of unique Freevee reveals will probably be listed there for streaming.
Fortunately, all Freevee titles will stay free to stream and will not require a Prime subscription. The change will solely apply to areas the place Amazon’s free ad-supported streaming service is at the moment obtainable: the US, UK, Germany, and Austria.
An Amazon spokesperson issued the next assertion to Deadline in regards to the transition:
“To ship a less complicated viewing expertise for patrons, we’ve got determined to section out Freevee branding. There will probably be no change to the content material obtainable for Prime members, and an enormous providing of free streaming content material will nonetheless be accessible for non-Prime members, together with choose Originals from Amazon MGM Studios, quite a lot of licensed motion pictures and collection, and a broad library of FAST Channels – all obtainable on Prime Video.”
The writing was on the wall for Freevee
Supply: Unsplash / Thibault Penin
Amazon introduced in late December 2023 that it could begin displaying adverts to Prime Video subscribers from January 2024. This blurred the road between Freevee and Prime Video, as the previous confirmed ad-supported free content material. A couple of months later, in Might 2024, Amazon introduced interactive and shoppable adverts, together with interactive pause adverts, for Prime Video.
The content material crew liable for Freevee’s unique content material has already transitioned to Amazon MGM Studios. The transfer can also be unlikely to have an effect on the manufacturing of any of Freevee’s present unique titles. They’re simply getting a brand new, extra fashionable house, which ought to assist enhance their viewership.