Amazon's Music Unlimited streaming service launches
Amazon Music Unlimited is a new music streaming service by Amazon that the company pits against established services such as Spotify and Apple Music.
While it shares similarities with those services, it is offering something unique as well. For instance, instead of offering just one tiered pricing, Amazon Music Unlimited is available in three different price categories.
While that sounds confusing at first, it may get even more confusing considering that Amazon is already operating a music streaming service called Prime Music.
Lets take a closer look at the service for starters.
Amazon's Music Unlimited
Amazon's Music Unlimited service starts at $3.99 per month for Amazon Echo, Echo Dot or Amazon Tap device owners. That's undercutting competing streaming services by a large margin, but is restricted to that single device.
This means no mobile or web access, just access through the one Amazon device.
The regular plan is available for $9.99, which other streaming services charge as well. Amazon Prime members may get it for $7.99 instead per month. The Prime member plan is also available for $79 per year.
Additionally, Amazon plans to launch a family plan for $14.99 per month which provides access to the full streaming service for up to six family members. The price matches the family price plans of Spotify and Apple Music.
The price point of $7.99 per month or $79 per year looks good on paper on first glance. But it applies only to Prime members who pay Amazon for the subscription already. In the US, Prime costs $99 per year which means that Prime members would have to shell out nearly the same amount to add Music Unlimited to their plan (or $20 less if they pay yearly).
Considering that Prime Music is included with a Prime membership, one has to wonder if the service is worth the extra costs.
If you compare Prime Music to Music Unlimited, you will notice that the former offers access to about 2 million songs while the latter to "tens of millions of songs". Music Unlimited users get access to a new app, curated playlists, and artist commentaries on top of that.
Is that worth the extra costs? Depends largely on whether you are satisfied with Prime Music. If music that you like to listen to is missing, you might be tempted to give Music Unlimited a try. Considering that the pricing is better than that of Spotify or Apple Music, Amazon Prime customers who are customers of these services may be tempted to leave those services in favor of Amazon Music Unlimited.
The $3.99 per month price for Echo owners looks fabulous on paper, but it has the caveat that it works only on a single device. If you don't require music streaming on the go, on your smartphone or computer, and have an Echo at home, then you may find the offer attractive because of its price.
Amazon Music Unlimited is controlled by voice on Echo devices which means that you can ask Echo to play certain songs, songs by artists, but also by mood, occasion or anything else you may come up with (Echo, play cheesy 80s television shows theme songs).
Closing Words
Amazon has deep enough pockets to stay long enough in the music streaming vertical to make Music Unlimited a success. Considering that it can push the service through its Amazon site and other properties, it will certainly grab a sizeable share of the market right from the get go.
Now You: Do you use music streaming services?
Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.
Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).
For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.
You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.
If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.
EMRE ÇITAK posts are useless because they are fraught with inaccuracies and are irrelevant.
AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI
Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.
Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.
Don’t tell me!
Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!
Bring in the dictatorship!!!
And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe
GateKeeper ?
That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!
But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!
Rreedom of Association is one of our most important rights. Some people think it’s Freedom, but no, I say Rreedom is far more important. There are many STATE-MANDATED associations that save jobs, that’s right MANDATED. I can’t name any of them, but rest assured they are bad, because saving jobs are bad, and people having jobs leads to dictatorship!!! Anyone who disagrees is too radical for Ghacks maybe, because I’m not sure.
@The Dark Lady,
@KeZa,
@Database failure,
@Howard Pearce,
@Howard Allan Pearce,
Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.
The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
>> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
How to display only articles by a specific author:
Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033
By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
>> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme
We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.
“Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”
Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.
No, they didn’t lmao.
https://twitter.com/vxunderground/status/1706523877478670542
What does this article about Musk/Tesla have to do with computing, devices, phones?
More irelevant filler.
yeah sure… they are always the victims and it is only against them ????
Believe them 100% and never question anything. This lawsuit sounds like the type you heard when people were eating batteries.