Amazon is bringing free music to everyone in the UK, regardless of whether they’re Prime members, own an Echo speaker, or have no horse in the race.
The company has revealed a free, ad-supported tier is now available within the Amazon Music app for iOS, Android, Fire TV, and on the web.
The new streaming tier, which launches in the US, UK and Germany today, offers a “selection of top playlists and thousands of stations for free” with no subscription or credit card details necessary.
It’s believed that the catalogue is similar in size to the 2 million tracks freely available to Prime Members, who don’t have to endure advertisements. It’s effectively the same as the deal non-Prime member Echo owners get, which does serve up advertisements every few songs.
The third tier is the Amazon Music Unlimited service which offers a full catalogue of tracks akin to Apple Music and Spotify and costs $7.99/£6.99 a month, if you’re a Prime Member, or $9.99/£9.99 a month otherwise. There’s also an Amazon Music HD subscription for those audiophiles out there, but again that costs more.
It means anyone can at least access some of Amazon’s music streaming catalogue without buying or paying for anything.
However, it isn’t as good a deal as that offered by Spotify Free, which offers access to the full catalogue of music, ad supported and only via themed playlists. It also lacks the access to personalised playlists like Discover Weekly, which are available to Spotify Free users.
Apple Music is the outlier as, beyond the 30-day free trial it offers all new subscribers, there is no free streaming tier on offer.
If none of this works for you, you can nab four months of Amazon Music Unlimited for just 99¢/99p a month (via TechCrunch) right now.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
