Amazon announced the launch of Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, which the company describes as “the all-you-can-eat content sercvice built from the ground up just for kids”.
“Kindle FreeTime Unlimited brings together for the first time all of the types of content kids and parents love—books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows—into one simple, unlimited, easy-to-use service for kids ages 3-8,” a spokesperson for Amazon tells WebProNews.
The service is only available on the new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD. For Amazon Prime members, it costs $2.99 per child per month or $6.99 for the whole family. If you’re not a Prime customer, you can get FreeTime Unlimited for $4.99 per child per month or $9.99 per family.
The service includes individual profiles, so everything in each person’s library is their own. Kids can browse by actual content or by category (like “Princesses”), and see applicable books, games and shows.
Apps have in-app payments, ads and social media removed, so you don’t have to worry about your kids getting involved with any of that. Amazon says the content is all pre-screened for “age-appropriateness”.
“As a parent it’s hard to predict what my daughter is going to enjoy, or which movie she’s going to watch 50 times in a row—so I buy a range of content and hope for the best—but I get it wrong frequently,” said Peter Larsen, VP, Amazon Kindle. “FreeTime Unlimited gives kids the freedom to explore age-appropriate content on their own and pick for themselves what they want to watch, play or read next. For as little as $2.99 a month, your child will have unlimited access to thousands of popular books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows from Disney, Nickelodeon, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, PBS, Sesame Workshop and more.”
The service will be part of a free over-the-air software update that Amazon will automatically push to the Kindle Fire devices in the coming weeks.