Amazon Music Unlimited review: A year with the music streaming service
For a few more days Amazon is offering the Music Unlimited service free for three months. After that it is £10.99 a month for access to over 100 million songs and podcasts. The subscription promises higher quality audio, offline play and unlimited skips for its extensive library of songs.
Amazon Music Unlimited is different from Prime Music, which is available to all Prime members. You get ad-free music with Prime Music but if you want to listen offline you are restricted to playlists and choosing songs from those playlists.
Amazon Music Unlimited adds extra features to this. With this plan, you can pick and play any song, and you have unlimited skips when listening to stations. Music Unlimited also unlocks the service’s highest fidelity versions of tracks, in HD, Ultra HD, and Spatial Audio formats.
How does the service shape up after a year of use?
Song choice on Amazon Music Unlimited
Amazon says there are over 100 million songs available on Amazon Music Unlimited and over the course of a year I didn't find a single song that was not available to choose and listen to at my leisure. There is a playlist feature where you can choose your favourite artists quickly and easily, helping you to build entire libraries of songs that you can listen to at leisure.
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The big bonus for me was the integration with my Alexa advices. I use Echo Dot devices in a number of rooms in the house and moving between them meant I could play my favourite music anywhere and, unlike the free option, it plays songs in full and high quality audio.
The voice commands allow you to get creative. You can search for songs by lyric (and the app has a nice lyric feature that scrolls as the song plays) and you can ask Alexa to play you songs based more vague categories such as 'upbeat pop'. When testing the feature out it serves a good mixture of well known and more obscure artists, which helps to discover new people to listen to based on your preferences.
Music quality on Amazon Music Unlimited
Amazon Music Unlimited delivers High Definition and Ultra High Definition music, at a bit depth of up to 24 bits and a sample rate up to 192 kHz. That is the limit of modern studio quality equipment and is four times the quality of a CD. This basically mean a more accurate representation of the original recording.
It also comes with spatial audio—an immersive, multi-dimensional audio format that works with standard headphones to put you at the centre of the music. This is the part that is really noticeable compared to the standard Prime Music and Prime Free subscriptions. Songs do sound noticeably clearer, with artist vocals really sounding like you are standing close and instrumentals clear and crisp.
Ease of use
The Amazon Music Unlimited app is essentially a replica of the Amazon Music Unlimited desktop site and it was incredibly easy to choose songs, build playlists and access the Ultra HD music. There is a also a limited podcast range too and they were easy to line up in a queue for long commutes.
Verdict
I've been living with Amazon Music Unlimited for a year now and I can honestly say I prefer it to Spotify, my previous music streaming service. The voice control and ability to play music on Alexa-enabled devices is the key feature that makes the monthly subscription worthwhile. However, the 100-million strong song library is another reason to take the plunge. The catalogue is huge and the ability to create playlists and discover new artists makes Amazon Music one of the best services around.
You can get three months of Amazon Music free by signing up for a trial here before 11 January.
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