Amazon’s ad-free Prime Music service serves up more than a million tracks
Amazon’s long-rumored music streaming service is finally here. It’s called Amazon Prime Music, and it offers unlimited, ad-free streaming of more than a million songs and hundreds of playlists. And if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber, you get it completely free on your smartphone, tablet and computer.
If you’re not an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial of Prime Music — but there is no monthly subscription option. If you want to continue using the service after 30 days, you’ll need to sign up for Amazon Prime, which is priced at $99 a year.
Prime Music works in much the same way as Prime Video. Users can browse a library of tracks and albums and listen on-demand — without advertisements or restrictions. You can either search for your favorite bands and artists or check out hundreds of ready-made playlists.
There’s also an offline listening option, allowing users to download tracks to their devices and store them locally so they can be enjoyed without a data connection.
Prime Music will compete with rival music-streaming services like Rdio, Beats Music and Spotify. But with just a small fraction of the latter’s 20 million tracks, catching up could be a slow process. Nevertheless, Prime Music makes a Prime Subscription an even better value, and it’s sure to be popular with those who are already signed up.
Prime Music is available through the web browser on your computer, and via the Amazon Music apps for Android and iOS. Only Prime subscribers in the United States can enjoy it now, however.