Now that it has several original series to promote—including Catastrophe and the award-winning Transparent—Amazon has decided to go ahead and launch its Prime Video component as a standalone streaming service. According to Mashable, Prime Video is cutting the cord from its retail-giant parent company, in a sense, announcing that its film and TV offerings will be available for $8.99 a month. This is presumably great news for anyone interested in watching Mozart In The Jungle and/or Chi-Raq, who worried about having to subscribe to Amazon Prime and its “every day could be Black Friday” sentiments.
The new Prime Video membership offers U.S. viewers HD videos for a dollar less than Netflix, as well as offline viewing and access to video from JetBlue flights—and just in time to catch up on Doctor Who. With this news, Prime Video has officially joined the ranks of HBO and Starz, the latter of which just rolled out its own standalone service earlier this month. It’s your move now, Cinemax.