Amazon To Reportedly Link Additional Video Services With Prime Instant Video

It's been suggested that Amazon's Prime Video service is one of the most popular in the US, falling short only to Netflix, and given some of the company's moves in recent months, it's clear as day that it wants to make sure it's not going to remain in the #2 spot forever.

This past summer, Amazon blew our socks off with the announcement that the three Top Gear legends - Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond - would be coming to Prime Video. It cost the company a pretty penny, too: upwards of $250 million USD. Fueling its desire to become the top video service, the company just last month yanked competing streamer devices from its digital shelves, including the Apple TV and Google Chromecast.

Amazon is banking big on the fact that having the Top Gear trio on its service will lure some new subscribers, but it must do a lot more than that to keep people tuned in. According to a new leak, it appears that the company hopes to do this by bringing popular third-party content providers into its service.

Names are not mentioned at this time, but it seems Amazon wants to bring in some networks that are popular on cable TV, in effect giving people a great cable TV replacement. This could appeal to cord-cutters and those who never signed up for a cable TV subscription ever before.

Financial terms either on the side of Amazon with these third-parties or on the customer side have not been revealed. It's difficult to guess whether or not this premium content would have a separate subscription fee or not, but it seems likely that Amazon's goal would be to keep its Prime subscription fees the exact same. As we've seen from Netflix, though, sometimes that's not always possible. If an additional subscription fee must be shelled out for, it could involve a package deal, rather than a la carte items.

One thing's for sure: while Amazon's target is Netflix, it's great as consumers to have such fierce competition.