Amazon takes on Spotify with Music Unlimited
Amazon has finally launched its on-demand music service in the UK – how will it fare against Spotify?
18 Nov 2016
With a catalogue of 40 million songs, playlists and personalised stations, Amazon plans on making a big impact in the on-demand music market.
Why Music Unlimited is different to Prime Music
If you’re an Amazon Prime member you’ve already got access to Prime Music as part of the subscription. With Prime Music you can choose from 2 million songs to play on-demand or offline without any ads. It’s a great bonus included with Prime, but it may not have all of the songs you want to listen to.
For an additional payment per month you can subscribe to Music Unlimited which gives you a staggering 40 million tunes – including the latest releases. And, if you have an Amazon Echo speaker it’s only a few quid per month for limited use only.
You can download your favourite albums, songs and playlists to listen to when you’re offline so you can take music with you anywhere.
Our favourite features include…
- Playlists – carefully curated playlists based on mood, genre, season and even location
- X-ray lyrics – displays the lyrics to the song you’re listening to so you can sing along
- Recommended – personalised suggestions based on the songs you’ve liked or already own
You can control everything through the Amazon Music app, which is free to download on iOS and Android
Download the app from Google Play or iTunes
Designed to work with Amazon Echo
Amazon Echo and voice-assistant Alexa is where Music Unlimited comes into its own. Alexa becomes a DJ when you ask her to play something. Simply start by saying, ‘Alexa, play…’ and she’ll play any song by name, by mood or even by era. All you need to do is ask.
She’s quite clever too. If you’ve forgotten the name of the song but remember the chorus say, ‘Alexa, play the song that goes – yeah you and me we can ride on a star’ and Gary Barlow will be singing to you in no time at all.
But you don’t need an Echo speaker to enjoy Music Unlimited. The streaming service is good to go across a range of devices from smartphone and tablet to laptop and Sonos smart sound multi-room home audio.
Choose the package that’s right for you
If you’re interested in taking up Music Unlimited you have 4 options:
- Echo plan – a special subscription for Amazon Echo owners to listen to music on their Echo or Dot whether you have Amazon Prime or not
- Individual plan – you can play music on all of your devices, and you get a discount if you’re a Prime member.
- Family plan – this plan has all of the benefits of the individual plan along with up to 6 other family members.