Playing the game started by Spotify and very recently by YouTube Music, Amazon Music is now offering a free tier for those who want to experience their music streaming service without making any commitment or any payment just yet. As long as you have an Alexa-supported device, you will be able to access a selection of top playlists and stations for free. Well, as free as it can get as it has ads that will play in between some of the songs.
If you live in the US and you aren’t an Amazon Prime member or a subscriber to Amazon Music Unlimited, you will now be able to listen to free music if you have a compatible Alexa-enabled device. You will be able to ask Alexa to play a station based on a song, artist, era, and genre. You can also play the top global playlists like Country Heat, Fuego Latino, Pop Culture, 80s music, Coldplay, etc.
But of course, the free access is limited and it is ad-supported. What Amazon is hoping is that those who have experienced Amazon Music for free will then become a subscriber either to Amazon Prime or to Amazon Music Unlimited. The former is $12.99 per month and the music part is bundled into other things like shipping perks, discounts, etc. The latter has different tiers ranging from $3.99 to $9.99 and will give you access to more than 50 million songs including the latest releases.
This new free tier was actually reported earlier this week and now we have confirmation that Amazon Music wants to go up against the likes of Spotify, which until a few days ago, was the only major music streaming service that had a free tier to offer. Now we have both Google and Amazon offering free versions of their service, although they are limited to their respective supported devices.
So if you have an Alexa-enabled device and you are currently in the US, you can try out the free Amazon Music service and then use Alexa to play whatever station or playlist you feel like playing.
