[Tapper:] Welcome back to THE LEAD. Time for the Money Lead. Do you ever miss the songs that were on the radio about six months ago? You can get new music anywhere, but slightly old music, that's hard to find. But fear not. Amazon is here for you. Buzzfeed reports that the company plans to launch a music streaming service this summer through Amazon Prime that will offer a catalog of songs and albums that were released at least six months ago. Let's hope this one makes the cut. So is this business model legit? Can it make Amazon money? Joining me now is Farhad Manjoo, technology columnist for the "New York Times." Farhad, good to see you again. So having older music as opposed to music streaming sites like Spotify, Pandora, Beats music, is there an opening in the streaming market for this?
[Farhad Manjoo, Technology Columnist, "new York Times":] Yes, I think so. I think the key here is it's Amazon wouldn't be competing against those services so much. It would just be offering something else for prime subscribers. By getting just the songs that are at least six months old it probably gets a huge discount from the music companies. It saves money and I think that people will be OK with this. Most people don't really want the newest music. You're fine with 6-month-old songs.
[Tapper:] This will be sold through Amazon Prime, which offers TV shows and movies now, some original content by Amazon like Alpha House from Gary Trudeau and it gives you free shipping through the Amazon site. They charge $99 for the overall service. Do you think Amazon will pick up significantly more members by adding this music feature?
[Manjoo:] I don't think the music feature itself is going to lead to a huge number of subscribers. It's just one more thing. This is their strategy with prime, just keep loading on kind of extra freebies. You can get free books from it, free movies, free shows, and now free songs. At some point, it keeps adding enough stuff that people who are on the margin might be like, well, it's now worth it. They want you to subscribe because then it turns out that people who subscribe buy a lot of stuff from Amazon. That's what they want, to hook you.
[Tapper:] This news comes after the confirmation that Apple has acquired Beats and paid $500 million for the Beats music streaming service. So nobody forgot about Dre. Why are companies putting so much money into streaming services?
[Manjoo:] It's because the download music market has gone away or is going away. People want to stream music and they can do that on their smartphones. It's become kind of a must-have feature for the big tech companies. They're all figuring out different ways to offer this service.
[Tapper:] Farhad Manjoo, thank you so much.
[Manjoo:] Thanks. Good to be here.
[Tapper:] In the Buried Lead, right now some of the richest and most powerful people on earth are gathering in Copenhagen for the 60th meeting of the Builderburg Group. This is a meeting known for its intense secrecy, all conversation strictly confidential, which is amazing when you consider that the former director of the NSA is on the guest list. But that secrecy gives rise to many concerns leading to protests, clashes with police, endless conspiracy theories about things that will happen behind closed doors that you won't find out about until you get a letter from your bank somewhere down the road. Like we said, this year's list of VIPs includes the NATO secretary general, plus CIA Director David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and on and on. You get the idea. That's it for THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. I now turn you over to Wolf Blitzer in "THE SITUATION ROOM." Have a great weekend. Mr. Blitzer.