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Amazon's ad-free Prime Music takes on Google Music, Beats and Spotify

Amazon continues to provide value to Prime subscribers and this time they are bringing ad-free music with access to over a million songs.
Written by Matthew Miller, Contributing Writer
Amazon's ad-free Prime Music takes on Google Music, Beats, and Spotify
Image: Amazon

There were rumors of Amazon launching a music subscription service for Prime subscribers.

A recent report from AppleInsider said the service launched late on Wednesday for web usage with iOS, Android, and Kindle apps coming soon. The streaming music service is focused on playlist creation and playback with ad-free access to over a million songs.

Until the iOS and Android Amazon Music apps (currently known as Amazon MP3) are updated you can log in through your web browser and stream music. You will see buttons to add songs to your library, which can take a while to build up your library. It is easier to go through their created playlists and add and enjoy these titles. The mobile apps should be released soon.

Unlike other music streaming services, there is currently no radio option where you enter in an artist, genre, or mood to have music selected for you. However, so far I find their created playlists to do the job well and you can always create your own from their large library of songs.

A couple of years ago I took a look at various streaming services and mentioned using Amazon MP3 for storing my own music and music purchased from Amazon. Amazon lets you upload just 250 of your own songs for free or pay $24.99/year for up to 250,000 songs. I was hoping this Prime Music service would bump up music uploads to something like 5,000, but I don't see any change in the upload and storage options.

However, with today's release of Amazon Prime Music, I can now stop paying monthly for Google Music All Access and stream and download all the songs I want from Amazon's server. I also like that I can access Prime Music and my own uploaded collection of songs from multiple devices and computers.

I am an Amazon Prime member for their video streaming service and free shipping. $99 per year is a heck of a deal and this new Amazon Music is just icing on the cake. Giving up Google Music will save me over $95 a year. Amazon may not have the number of songs, but they have enough for my tastes and I am pleased to save some money.

You can find answers to all your questions about Prime Music on the Amazon website. One important restriction is that the service is currently only available in the US and Puerto Rico.

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