Amazon Expands Free Amazon Music Tier for Prime Members with 100 Million Songs
Amazon is continuing to search for ways to justify the Prime membership price increase that it introduced earlier this year. In February, Amazon raised the annual price of a Prime subscription to $139, though the price of a standalone Prime Video subscription was unaffected. Today, the company is unveiling a new tier of its music subscription service Amazon Music, which will be free to all Prime members.
The new tier, which Amazon calls Music Prime, will give all Prime members access to Amazon’s catalog of over 100 million songs at no additional cost, up from the 2 million they had access to before. The big catch, however, is that Prime customers who utilize this tier of Amazon Music can only get access to shuffled artists, albums, and playlists. That means that users of the new tier won’t be able to pick and choose specific songs to play on their Alexa devices at any given moment.
That caveat is intended to incentivize users to sign up for Amazon Music Unlimited. A subscription will cost an extra $9 per month and allow customers to download songs and podcasts to listen offline. Users of Amazon Music Unlimited can also navigate to any song on-demand, and get unlimited skips. Amazon currently offers a 30-day free trial to music unlimited, just as it does for Prime Video.
Thus, the new free tier of Amazon Music isn’t for casual music fans, and it is unlikely that many of the high-frequency Unlimited subscribers will want to switch over. However, for Prime members who have never checked out Amazon Music, the free offer might be the perfect gateway to a future Music Unlimited subscription.
Amazon has been busy lately integrating its Music service into the rest of its media offerings. Amazon Music is partnering with Prime Video to provide live concerts after every “Thursday Night Football” game, featuring artists like Megan Thee Stallion and Kane Brown.
Amazon Music will also carry audio versions of the new daily sports talk shows Amazon is launching this month. There will be 12 hours of free sports content every day, and users will be able to watch on Amazon’s viewing platforms or listen in like they do with their favorite podcasts.
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Amazon Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.