Amazon On Demand Music Unlimited Powered By Alexa Is At Your Command Starting Today
Move over Spotify and scoot your booty Apple, you'll both need to make room for Amazon. The world's largest online retailer is now an official player in the streaming music business with Amazon Music Unlimited, an on-demand music service boasting "tens of millions of songs," hand-curated playlists, and personalized stations. Oh, and it's pricing plans are rather attractive, too.
The streaming music field has become a bit crowded in recent years, but if there was one company in a position to make some noise, it was Amazon. And that's exactly what it's doing. Pricing is pretty standard at $9.99 per month for non-Prime members, but if you have a Prime subscription, you get a discounted rate of $7.99 per month. It's even cheaper if you pay in annual installments—$79 per year, which breaks down to a fraction above $6.58 per month. Even Google's introductory $7.99 per month rate for its on-demand music service can't compete with that, and it's no longer available anyway.
Pricing alone isn't how Amazon plans to differentiate itself from the competition. A big part of Amazon's sales pitch is its Echo integration with new Alexa voice controls. For example, you can bark the command, "Alexa, play Sia" and Alexa will create a playlist of Sia's most popular songs. You can also ask Alexa to play a band's latest song, fire up a list of tunes based on your mood, and more.
As part of its Echo play, Amazon is offering another subscription option, one that runs $3.99 per month. That gets you full access to its on-demand music service on your Echo, Echo Dot, or Amazon Tap, albeit just one of them. It's a neat option if you only listen to music in your home, but if you also plan to stream on other devices, you'll have to pony up for a full subscription.
All of the plans mentioned are for individuals. While not yet available, Amazon says it will soon offer a family plan for $14.99 per month that allows up to six family members to manage their own accounts. You also have the option of paying $149 per year for a family plan, which works out to around $12.42 per month.
Amazon Music Unlimited is available now with a free 30-day trial.
