Amazon Music Now Offers Its Full Catalog To Prime Subscribers, But There's A Catch
In February 2022, Amazon made headlines after it decided to raise the price of its Prime subscription by a steep 17%. Consumers who used to pay $12.99 per month for the service until January 2022 found themselves paying $14.99 per month for essentially the same product. Those opting for a yearly subscription to Amazon Prime needed to shell out $139 for the privilege — as opposed to just $119 previously. Adding insult to injury, the increased subscription fee did not entitle Amazon Prime subscribers to any additional benefits. Needless to say, thousands of Prime subscribers in the U.S. weren't thrilled with this change. Amazon, for its part, asserted that the price hikes were rational, considering that the company last hiked prices for Prime more than four years ago.
More than nine months since Amazon raised prices for Prime, the company has finally decided to offer tangible benefits to its large Prime clientele. In a blog post announcing a major change to the company's Music Streaming platform, Amazon confirmed that it has opened access to its massive library of 100 million songs to all Prime users. Until recently, access to this library was restricted to Amazon Prime Unlimited subscribers who shelled out an additional $8.99 per month ($89 per year) for the privilege. In addition to giving Prime Subscribers access to Amazon's entire music library, the company has also taken the battle to Spotify and announced that most podcasts on its platform will now be ad-free.
What's the catch?
While there is no denying that Amazon's decision to open up access to 100 million songs is a welcome move, it is making efforts not to anger its large subset of paying Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers. While some of them might already feel shortchanged, they could take solace from the fact that Prime users will not be able to stream music on-demand. Amazon Prime subscribers — who will need to install the Amazon Music app to access these benefits — will be restricted to shuffling and playing songs from various artists, listening to personalized playlists, and downloading songs for offline listening.
Unsurprisingly, people on the Amazon Prime tier will only be able to listen to music at much lower bit rates. Prime Unlimited subscribers, in comparison, have access to HD (16-bit/44.1 kHz) and UHD (24-bit/44.1 to 192 kHz) quality music across multiple devices. In addition to these, Prime subscribers will also miss out on the spatial audio feature.
As outlined earlier, Amazon Prime members now get on-demand, ad-free access to top podcasts from channels like CNN, NPR, ESPN, and The New York Times. The company also announced the launch of Amazon-exclusive podcasts across various genres. In addition to these changes, the updated Amazon Music app has an entirely new look and now allows users to preview a podcast before deciding to listen to it.