Does Amazon Prime Have Free Music Downloads

Amazon Music Unlimited vs. Prime number Music - What's the Difference?

Hero image showing Amazon Music Unlimited branding for Dolby Atmos content

(Image credit: Amazon/Dolby)

Amazon'southward using the back-to-schoolhouse prep season to requite customers a bargain on its premium Music Unlimited (opens in new tab) streaming service.

A new offering from Amazon gives Prime Educatee subscribers the option to tack Music Unlimited on for $0.99 per month. This offer is uniform with both annual and monthly Prime Student plans. If you're a higher student who hasn't kicked the tires on Prime Student, a 6-month trial is available here (opens in new tab).

The current standard Music Unlimited offer for existing Prime members begins with a 3-months gratis trial and and so requires a $8.99/calendar month fee. Non a Prime member? You can sign upwards for a 30-day trial (opens in new tab) and cancel before your trial runs out.

If you're non familiar with Amazon's music services, the retailer offers 2 music plans, and the difference proves that yous become what you pay for.

Prime Music (free for Prime subscribers (opens in new tab)) is a neat freebie, only Music Unlimited ($8.99 per month with Prime, $9.99 per calendar month without Prime) provides more songs and additional means to control what you're hearing.

About Amazon Music Unlimited

Amazon Music Unlimited gives users access to advert-costless and unlimited music plays in lossless CD-quality or better through the Amazon Music app and Amazon Music website.

More than ninety meg of Amazon's songs are available at what Amazon chooses to telephone call HD quality (16-bit/44.1kHz sample charge per unit, which is CD-quality audio), while Amazon says 7 1000000 songs are available at Ultra Hard disk (upward to 24-chip/192kHz sample charge per unit, which is improve than CD-quality sound, aka hi-res).

Amazon Music Unlimited costs $8.99 per month for Prime members or $9.99 per calendar month for non-members. Amazon is offering a 90-solar day free Amazon Music Unlimited trial (opens in new tab).

Yous can besides sign up to a $3.99 per month tier that lets y'all use the service on a single Amazon Echo or Echo Dot wireless speaker.

Up until 2021, Amazon was charging $5 to admission the its CD-quality and hi-res audio content, merely this has at present been scrapped. This brings Amazon Music Unlimited in line with the likes of Apple Music, which provides admission to CD-quality and hi-res audio content for $9.99.

Amazon Music Unlimited is supported by Amazon'south streaming on desktop (Windows, Mac) and mobile (iOS, Android), Burn down TV, and Fire Tablets. As well, third-party devices, including speakers from Sonos, McIntosh and Sennheiser.

And while more than sounds dainty, I know the question on your listen: do you actually need to be spending that extra cash? To find out, we've compared both of Amazon'due south services and fifty-fifty investigated how they stack upwards to the Spotify and Apple tree Music.

How are Music Unlimited and Prime Music the same?

Amazon Prime Music and Music Unlimited both offer advertizing-free on-need music listening with offline playback. Both are available on many devices, including the all-time smartphones, Amazon Echo speakers, best smart TVs, best Alexa speakers, best Macbooks and best PCs, for case.

What does Music Unlimited have that Prime doesn't?

The first major deviation betwixt the services is that Prime Music only offers 2 meg songs, while Music Unlimited offers ninety one thousand thousand tracks.

If you lot dear to chat with Alexa, you lot'll also prefer Music Unlimited, which allows for a stronger set of voice commands. For example, if a friend told me that Lorde's latest record is astonishing (information technology is), I could but say "Alexa, play Lorde'south new album," to hear it. If your needs are less specific, simply ask the assistant to play music by an artist ("Alexa, play Run The Jewels") to get a playlist of that musician's most popular tracks.

Music Unlimited also unlocks Alexa's ability to proper name the song that's stuck in your caput. If you say "Alexa, play the song that goes, 'You see what I mean?, USDA certified lean,'" it volition recognize the melody as "The Man" by The Killers. Y'all can also ask Alexa to pull up songs from a specific decade, mood or genre.

More: Get more from Alexa with these 30 best Alexa skills.

How much more than does Music Unlimited cost?

Music Unlimited costs an actress $8.99 per month for Prime number members, which costs $xiv.99 per month per month, though y'all can salve $40 with its $139 per year annual billing.

Without Prime number, you'll spend $ix.99 per month for Music Unlimited, though if yous merely want to use Music Unlimited on an Echo, Repeat Dot or Tap speaker, that costs just $3.99 per calendar month.

	Prime number Music	Music Unlimited
Prime members	Free	$eight.99 per calendar month
Non-Prime members	$xiv.99 per month, or $139 per yr	$9.99 per calendar month

How does Amazon Music Unlimited compare to Spotify and Apple Music?

Amazon Music Unlimited offers a library of ninety million songs, which is like to nearest best music streaming services rivals such as Spotify and Apple Music.

Amazon Prime Music offers 2 million ad-free songs (with unlimited skips that can be downloaded for offline listening) equally part of a Prime subscription, and so it's not strictly speaking complimentary. Spotify's free program offers access to it's full catalog only at a lower information rate than its Premium subscription service.

Amazon Music Unlimited desktop — (Prototype credit: Amazon)

Who is Music Unlimited best for?

If you're a Prime subscriber, especially if you've got Alexa-enabled devices, you should seriously consider Music Unlimited. Not only will you save $2 per month over Spotify Unlimited or Apple Music, only you'll be using a service that'southward made for the speakers you've peppered your dwelling house with.

Too, one last note: if you know the difference between Garth Brooks and Chris Gaines, Amazon Music Unlimited is definitely correct for you. That's because it's the but service that streams all 16 of the country western superstar'due south studio albums (opens in new tab).

Adjacent: Undecided about whether Amazon Prime is worth information technology? Check out these Amazon Prime number perks. Also, if you want to know more about one of Amazon'due south closest rivals, here'due south 10 things you lot didn't know Spotify could exercise.

Equally a old editor of the U.K.'southward Howdy-Fi Pick magazine, Lee is passionate near all kinds of audio tech and has been providing sound advice to enable consumers to make informed buying decisions since he joined Which? mag as a production tester in the 1990s. Lee covers all things audio for Tom'due south Guide, including headphones, wireless speakers and soundbars and loves to connect and share the mindfulness benefits that listening to music in the very all-time quality can bring.