Walmart is rolling out a new partnership with Spotify, the popular music streaming service, to offer new benefits for Walmart+ subscription members, a company blog said.
Starting Tuesday (March 8), Walmart+ members will have access to Spotify Premium for six months for free.
Members can stream songs ad-free and have unlimited skips, along with playing “any song anywhere” and download music for listening offline.
Walmart also announced it will be giving out free Walmart+ memberships to all full- and part-time employees working in its stores, distribution centers and fulfillment centers.
“This new associate benefit is not only our way to say thank you for all they do, but it’s also so associates can use our membership, tell us how it’s going and ultimately speak to customers about it from personal experience,” the company wrote.
Read more: Amazon Now Ahead of Walmart in Share of Retail Spending New PYMNTS Data Show
PYMNTS wrote that, in the competition between Walmart and newer digital rivals such as Amazon, Amazon has ended 2021 with a bigger chunk of the retail spending than Walmart.
The reason was a burst of fourth quarter activity, in which the eCommerce company now claimed a 9.4% share of retail buying. Walmart, by contrast, had 8.6%.
This was the first time Amazon was able to pull ahead of the brick-and-mortar retail titan.
PYMNTS, citing its own analyses, wrote that it was actually more like Walmart had slipped behind. The two stores were deadlocked in almost identical rates until recently.
There was a 10.6% share in retail sales for Amazon for the fourth quarter, which propelled Amazon ahead.
PYMNTS data also showed that the usual U.S. consumer spent around $71,000 last year, coming out to around 38% of which went to retail.