Amazon discontinues Freevee app

Amazon.com is discontinuing Freevee (fv), its app for ad-supported and free entertainment streams, in August. This is indicated by an overlay in the app itself. The company recommends that users switch to its app for Prime Video. The streams previously available on Freevee with commercial breaks will also be available on Prime Video. However, the specific offer is constantly changing.

The Prime Video app has a major advantage for Amazon: It can offer viewers without a subscription additional streams there that are not free of charge. This upsell option is missing from the Freevee app due to its design.

Freevee will have been a free streaming alternative to Prime Video, which will have been financed by advertising. However, Freevee does not include the full range of films, TV series and sports programs for which Amazon owns the rights, but offers limited and other content. The catalog does not come close to Prime Video.

When it was launched in 2019, the service had a completely different name, IMDb Freedive. IMDb, originally Internet Movie Database, is also owned by Amazon.com. IMDb Freedive was soon renamed IMDb TV. In 2022, the name was changed to Freevee. The name is based on the informal English word freebie, which describes things given away free of charge, especially things distributed by organizations for advertising purposes.

Short existence

However, in the course of 2023, Amazon scaled back its efforts to promote the exclusively ad-financed offer. Instead, the data company has been interrupting even paid Prime video streams with advertisements since September 2023, thus cashing in twice. Commercials on Prime Video have also been disruptive in German-speaking countries since February 2024. At the time, news of Freevee's imminent demise also made the rounds, but Amazon.com denied it.

Amazon launched Freevee in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Freevee has also been available in Germany and Austria since 2022. The withdrawal has already begun. The app is currently still available for new installations on iPhones in the German-speaking countries in Apple's App Store, but no longer in Google's Play Store. The app would still be available in the US Play Store.

(ds)