Amazon Music: Plans, Pricing and Features Explained

There's a whole jungle of music streaming platforms out there, so it makes sense for Amazon to have one of its own within its massive service empire. Amazon Music may not sit at the very top alongside the world's Spotifys and Apple Musics, but it offers a 100-million-song library, high-resolution and spatial audio options, a podcast library, Alexa voice control, and a pretty pleasant user interface that makes finding music quite easy.

Amazon Music's subscriptions range from free all the way up to the premium Music Unlimited tier, which can be added for $9 a month on top of an Amazon Prime subscription. What is Amazon Music? Which plans are available? How much does Amazon Music cost? All that and more in our article.

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 huge range of popular podcasts for streaming and downloading for offline listening. Like its rivals, Amazon Music users can access a large number of current and back-catalog songs and albums and build their own playlists that can be shared. New artists, albums, curated playlists, podcasts, and more in HD and Ultra HD (more on that below) help you easily find something good to play, which matters if you're thinking about Spotify, since that's currently not something Spotify offers.

The platform's interface and controls are easy to use and full of album art and visuals (taking more than a few cues from Spotify), and it's available through iOS and Android apps, desktop apps for Mac and Windows, and web browsers, as well as Echo and Fire TV devices. Amazon Music also works with Alexa voice control, letting you skip, pause, or ask it to play something for you with voice commands.

Which Plans Are Available?

Amazon Music Free

If you're looking for an entry-level experience to dip your toes in, the most basic plan is the ad-supported Amazon Music Free, which doesn't require an Amazon Prime subscription to use. The bare-bones tier is a bit limited (as is typical for a mostly ad-based, free service), giving you access to "millions of podcast episodes" and thousands of playlists and stations with ads playing between songs.

Perhaps the most frustrating part for most people is that playback is limited to shuffle only — meaning you can't pick any specific song you want to play — and songs aren't available in lossless HD or Ultra HD formats. All you need is a standard Amazon account, and you don't even need to provide credit card details.

Amazon Music Prime

If you can't stand the ads on the free tier and you're already an Amazon Prime subscriber (or are thinking about 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 you also unlock ad-free access to the full 100-million-song library, podcasts, stations, and playlists. Downloads are available at this level too, which is good, since this tier only lets you play on one device at a time unless you're playing downloaded music stored on your device.

It doesn't come without its quirks, though. While you get access to this expanded library (actually the same 100 million songs as the Unlimited tier), playback of albums, artists, and playlists is still limited to shuffle mode, except for "Full Access Playlists," which you can pick, play, skip, and download whenever you want. Things get even more specific for Echo devices (even Full Access Playlists are shuffle-only there), Fire TV (music is there, but no podcasts), and Fire Tablet (where the catalog is limited and there are no ad-free podcasts), and you also can't access any of that HD, Ultra HD, and spatial audio quality. All of that is just something to keep in mind…

Amazon Music Unlimited

Amazon Music Unlimited is the complete experience. It's basically everything the Amazon Music Prime plan offers, minus the annoying shuffling or limits on what you can and can't play — you just have it. But I buried the lede here — Amazon Music Unlimited is all about sound quality. All 100 million songs are available in lossless HD format (that's CD-quality 16-bit/44.1kHz, with an average bitrate of 850 kbps), and an unspecified "millions" of tracks are available in the top-tier Ultra HD quality range (24-bit depth and a sample rate ranging from 44.1 to 192 kHz, with an average bitrate of 3,730 kbps). These high-resolution tracks use the FLAC audio codec, and the crystal-clear, immersive sound competes with the audio quality of rivals like Tidal (which also uses FLAC) and Apple Music (which uses the comparable Apple ALAC codec). There are also more than a thousand tracks specializing in Dolby Atmos and 360 Reality Audio, if you want some immersive surround sound. Music Unlimited itself has a decent range of plan options with a few limitations (outlined below), but overall, it's a solid music streaming plan worth considering.

How Much Does Amazon Music Cost?

In typical Amazon fashion, there are several plans you can join, including the ad-based Amazon Music Free, the ad-free Amazon Music Prime that you get for free if you're an Amazon Prime member like with Prime Video, and the top-tier Amazon Music Unlimited, which you can pay a premium for on top of your Amazon Prime membership or buy à la carte. Here's how it breaks down:

Amazon Music Free: Free, no Amazon Prime subscription required, but an account must be created.

Amazon Music Prime: Included for free with an Amazon Prime Membership, which currently runs $15 a month or $139 a year. Students can currently get a pretty great deal, though, which also gives them access to Prime Video, Prime Gaming, and more.

Amazon Music Unlimited: This is the top of the stack, and it offers several subscription options.

• Music Unlimited Individual Plan: This single-user plan will cost you $9/month or $89/year on top of a Prime membership, or $10/month on its own. New subscribers can get a three-month trial period before having to pay anything.
• Music Unlimited Family Plan: This plan allows playback on up to six devices at the same time and costs $15/month or $149/year. It requires an Amazon Prime subscription.
• Music Unlimited Student Plan: On top of the special student Prime rate mentioned above, the usual $5/month student rate for Amazon Music has also been dropped to 99 cents a month for up to four years.
• Music Unlimited Single Device Plan: This one's a bit odd, since it's only available for Echo and Fire TV devices, doesn't include HD or Ultra HD quality or spatial audio tracks, and doesn't allow downloads. It's $5 a month with a Prime membership.

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