The American e-commerce leader is beefing up its music streaming catalog Amazon Music for subscribers of its premium delivery service. The latter now have access, at no extra cost, to 100 million tracks, compared to 2 million previously. However, there are some restrictions and not the least!
Last September, Amazon increased the price of its Prime subscription across Europe – the move follows a similar price hike in the US in February, when the price of Prime increased to $139, up from the previous $119 annual rate. And, in the face of some grumbling, the Seattle giant has modified its offer somewhat and now offers access to its entire catalog of Amazon Music, Spotify’s competitor, to all its subscribers, without advertising and at no extra cost.
From 2 to 100 million songs
Previously, Amazon Prime subscribers could listen to two million songs that are included in the subscription service’s free offerings including Prime Video, Prime Delivery, Amazon Music, Amazon Photos, Prime Gaming and Prime Reading. Now they can access a full catalog of 100 million songs and the best podcasts available without paying any additional fees. This huge catalog was previously available only to Amazon Music Unlimited users, who were charged 9.99 euros per month.
The music streaming service of the e-commerce giant is the only one, along with Apple, to make available, for the moment, a catalog of 100 million songs available to their users – a threshold that the Apple firm crossed last October.
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“When Amazon Music first launched for Prime members, we offered an ad-free catalog of 2 million songs, which was completely unique for music streaming at the time,” said Steve Boom, VP of Amazon Music. “We continue to innovate on behalf of our customers, and to bring even more entertainment to Prime members, on top of the convenience and value they already enjoy. We can’t wait for members to experience not only a massively expanded catalog of songs, but also the largest selection of ad-free top podcasts anywhere, at no additional cost to their membership.”
This new feature is accompanied by a redesign of the Amazon Music app. As such, the app is getting a new look and has also been enhanced with the new Podcast Previews feature, which allows users to preview a clip of the episode before launching it.
But, there is a BUT!
Listening to over 100 million songs, up from 2 million, completely ad-free is great news, but there’s a restriction.
Indeed, you won’t be able to listen to music entirely on demand. Only shuffle is allowed, which means you won’t be able to choose the songs you want to listen to. Instead, you will be able to select any artist, favorite album or playlist and it will play randomly.
Another restriction is that the songs are only available in “standard” quality. To overcome these limitations, users can subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited and listen to songs in high fidelity and Spatial Audio, while having the option to choose specific songs to listen to.
Click on this link to read this article in French version.
