Amazon Signs 4M Prime Members In A Week, Echo Dot Is Top-Seller

Amazon had yet another stellar holiday shopping season, with the retail-and-tech giant selling millions more Alexa-enabled devices than last year and seeing a major bump -- to the tune of four million signups in one week alone -- in Prime memberships through a last-minute free trial period.

The Seattle-based company released a bulky, bulleted list of seasonal highlights on Tuesday, with many revolved around the rising popularity of the Echo family of products.

One eye-catching figure: More than 4 million people signed up for Prime free trials or began paid memberships in a one-week period, according to Amazon.

However, the company has never announced how many Prime members it has; as of September 2017, Amazon Prime had about 90 million U.S. members (up 38% from a year earlier), according to estimates by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. Prime, which costs $99 per year in the U.S., offers free shipping on millions of items, as well as access to Prime Video and Prime Music and other perks.

According to Billboard, Amazon said the Echo Dot was the No. 1-selling product from any manufacturer in any category across Amazon, with several members of the Echo family (Spot, Dot and Buttons) selling out completely at various points. The numbers-averse company doesn't release actual sales figures, simply saying that "millions" were sold, but one way to back up its claim is that the "Amazon Alexa" app is currently tops on both the iOS and Android app stores, meaning a whole lotta people are trying out their new gizmos a day after Christmas.

Over on Amazon Music, the stripped-down streaming service that comes with a Prime membership, users have been using Alexa a ton in order to enhance their holiday experiences. Amazon said users streamed four-times more music from Amazon Music over Alexa compared to last year, and that overall music listening time on Alexa was up three-fold over the 2016 holidays. The most requested song and lyrics request from Alexa was "Jingle Bells," while "All I Want for Christmas" by Mariah Carey was the most streamed holiday song overall on the music service. Michael Bublé's  Christmas was the most played album on Amazon Music during the season.

Geographically, the East Coast was way more into the holiday spirit than those living on the West Coast, asking Alexa to play holiday tunes 2.5-times as many times, while listeners in NYC, Seattle, Chicago, Houston and San Diego were the top five cities for streaming holiday songs.