Prime Video + Prime Shipping + Prime Music is ~16 USD per year if you get the subscription from India.
I used to live in India but not anymore. So I was keen to only use Prime Video + Prime Music (since Prime Shipping doesn't work outside of India for that sub).
Both Prime Video and Music were rather unsatisfactory, and no Chromcast support was just the last straw for me to unsub.
In India, I don't know of anyone who actually pays for prime. Everyone gets it free bundled with their mobile or broadband plans.
All of these plans get Amazon Prime with free shipping, prime video and Amazon Music ad-free unlimited downloads:
Airtel:
- INR 299 (USD 4.37) per month plan includes unlimited call/text and 2.5GB data per day and includes Amazon Prime.
BSNL:
- INR 399 (USD 4.37) per month plan includes unlimited call/text and 30GB data per month.
Vodafone/IDEA:
- INR 399 (USD 5.83) per month plan includes unlimited call/text and 40GB data per month and includes Amazon Prime (full year) and Netflix (3-months trial).
Reliance Jio:
- INR 149 (USD 2.19) for unlimited voice/text and 1.5GB per day. Bundles HotStar (which streams cricket, tennis etc live) along with premium content from HBO, Starz etc.
IMO, all of the telcos in India have strong TV apps that give access to Movie/TV/News/Sports content (live+recorded) on mobile screens for free (bundled with really cheap mobile plans). Then there is Hotstar which is orders of magnitude better content than prime videos. So, unless someone is getting prime video for free I doubt anyone would be paying for it.
Even music is very much like that. Prime Music is good. But there is Airtel's Wynk, Jim has Saavn, then there is Youtube which has huge viewership for music videos.
But this only works if you are a new prime user and not an existing one :(. Though at least in Airtel you get INR 1500 worth of Netflix subscription which is pretty useful.
I have a laugh every time I see their "Recently Added Movies on Prime" section and find films from 2007. Or their "Popular|Trending Movies on on Prime" and see films with a <5 score on IMDB. There is no reason I would keep Prime for its movie offering! In the last six months they've added more and more sponsored offerings too, which is _really_ annoying -- I mean, I'm a subscriber, stop advertising to me.
I hate it when I miss the start (separate annoyance: seems often that audio takes a few seconds to start? Maybe that's the Shield's fault rather than Prime's) so I rewind, and then it hits me with the advert again...