Don’t overlook Amazon Music; it boasts a 100 million-song library, hi-res music, spatial audio, and plans to suit a wide range of users.
It’s a jungle of music streaming platforms out there, so it stands to reason that Amazon would have one among its massive kingdom of services. And while Amazon Music might not be top of mind among the Spotifys and Apple Musics of the world, you might be surprised by its 100-million-song library, high-resolution and spatial audio offerings, podcast library, Alexa voice control, and a pretty amiable user interface that makes finding music pretty easy.
Amazon Music’s subscriptions range from free to its premium Music Unlimited tier, which can be added for $9 per month on top of a subscription to Amazon Prime. However, Amazon recently announced that, as of September 19, this price is going up to $10 per month (more on this below). But they all come with some quirks and features. We’re going to break them all down for you to help you choose which, if any, Amazon Music plan is right for you.What is Amazon Music?
Amazon Music is a music streaming service similar to Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, Tidal, and Deezer. It offers a library of more than 100 million songs and a wide range of popular podcasts to stream and download for offline listening, too. Similarly to its competitors, Amazon Music users have access to a massive amount of current and back-catalog songs and albums and can create their own playlists that can be shared. It also uses your listening habits to create recommendations: new artists, albums, curated playlists, podcasts, and more, to help you easily find something good to play For the audiophiles out there, Amazon Music has plan tiers for hi-resolution lossless audio that it calls HD and Ultra HD (more on this below), which is important if you’re considering Spotify, as it currently does not.
The platform’s interface and controls are easy to use and full of album artwork and visuals (taking more than a few cues from Spotify) and can be accessed in a number of ways, including iOS and Android apps, desktop apps for Mac and Windows, and web browsers, as well as Echo and Fire TV devices. Additionally, Amazon Music works with Alexa voice control, allowing you to do things like skip tracks, pause, or ask it to play something, all with voice commands.What plans are available and what do you get?Amazon Music Free
If you’re looking for the entry-level experience to get your feet wet, its most basic plan is the ad-supported Amazon Music Free, for which you do not need to have an Amazon Prime subscription to use. The bare-bones tier is a bit limited (as most ad-based, free services are), giving you access to “millions of podcast episodes,” and thousands of playlists and stations with ads popping in between songs.
Perhaps most annoying for most people is the fact that playback is limited to only shuffle — meaning you can’t select any song you want to play — and songs are not available in the lossless HD or Ultra HD formats. All you need is a standard Amazon account, and you don’t even need to hand over your credit card information.Amazon Music Prime
If you can’t stomach the ads of the Free tier, and you’re already an Amazon Prime subscriber (or are thinking of becoming one), Amazon Music Prime is free. Not only do you get all the perks of an Amazon Prime account like same-day shipping and Prime Video, but the music situation also opens up with ad-free access to the entire 100-million song library, podcasts, stations, and playlists. Downloads are also made available at this level, too, which is good because this tier only allows for playback on one device at a time, too, unless you’re playing downloaded music that’s stored on your device.
