When you think of music streaming services, the main ones that right now are Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora and Tidal. But now Amazon is pushing its way into that elite circle with a brand new music streaming service, called Amazon Music Unlimited.
The new Amazon Music Unlimited service, which launched on Wednesday morning in the U.S., includes streaming access to tens of millions of songs, along with curated playlists and stations tailored to each user's personal tastes. The library expands pretty drastically from what Amazon's Prime Music currently offers. The service will also be completely ad-free, but it will not be free to subscribe. To stream, it will cost you about ten bucks a month if you're not already a member of Amazon Prime, or a slightly discounted eight dollars a month if you are. Subscribers also have to option to cut that price in half by only downloading the streaming service for their Amazon Echo if they have one. Check out all the pricing and availability information below.
Price for Prime Members:
$7.99/month or $79/year
Price for Non-Prime Members:
$9.99/month
Echo Subscription Play:
$3.99
Family Plan (Coming Soon):
$14.99/month or $149/year - up to 6 family members will be able to use the service simultaneously
Where is it available?
The U.S. version launched today. Amazon Music Unlimited also will be available for customers in the U.K., Germany and Austria this year.
While Amazon Music Unlimited will be available as an app, it seems that it was mainly designed to be compatible with the recent Amazon Echo device, a voice-activated electronic assistant speaker unit made to rival Apple's Siri with its Alexa. The new streaming service will be entirely compatible with Echo, and introduce a number of new voice commands and features to make playing music from the Echo much more intuitive. Check out Amazon Music's video about the new service below to see the Echo voice commands in action.
Of course, on the most basic level, users can ask Alexa to play a certain artist or song and the device will comply, but the the updated service also allows people to make less specific requests. For instance, someone with Amazon Music Unlimited can just speak a few lyrics of a song that they don't know the title of, and Alexa will find and play the song. Additionally, users can ask their Echo device to play music based on their mood, such as "Play happy music," and the new service will combine that user's personal taste with the streaming library's curated playlists to find the perfect playlist to fit the mood.
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