Amazon Music: Songs & Podcasts

Amazon Music Review: Free With Prime, but Only Unlimited Plays What You Pick

Is It Free With Prime? Shuffle Mode and the 15 All-Access Playlists

Prime, at $14.99 a month or $139 a year in the US, opens the whole 100-million-song catalog without ads, but Amazon's help pages say most of it plays in shuffle mode: ask for an artist or album and you get a mix of that music and similar tracks, with skip limits. The exceptions are 15 All-Access Playlists matched to your listening, which play on demand with unlimited skips and can be downloaded. You can give one playlist of your own, 15 to 50 songs, the same rights and swap it every 7 days; everything else on Prime streams only. Without Prime, the free tier has ad-supported stations, top playlists and podcasts but no downloads.

Ultra HD at up to 24-bit/192 kHz, and What It Costs Your Storage

Unlimited streams 100 million tracks in lossless HD, 16-bit/44.1 kHz at about 850 kbps, and millions more in Ultra HD at 24-bit and up to 192 kHz, averaging 3,730 kbps. Spatial audio comes in two formats, Dolby Atmos and Sony's 360 Reality Audio, and works with any headphones in the phone app. The bitrates have a price: Amazon puts a three-and-a-half-minute song at 9 MB in SD, 51 MB in HD and 153 MB in Ultra HD, and Ultra HD streaming uses up to 12 MB of data a minute. Most Android phones stop at 48 kHz without an external DAC, and the $6.99 Single Device plan for one Echo or Fire TV gets none of these formats.

$11.99 With Prime, $12.99 Without, $13.99 Through the App Store

US prices rose for existing subscribers from March 5, 2026. Prime members now pay $11.99 a month or $119 a year for Unlimited and non-members $12.99; Family costs $21.99 for up to six people streaming at once and requires Prime, and Student is $5.99 after SheerID verification. Subscribing inside the iPhone app costs more: the App Store lists Individual at $13.99 and Family at $24.99. Each billing month brings one Audible audiobook of any length, for Individual subscribers and the Family account holder only, playable only in this app. For comparison, Spotify Premium costs $12.99 with 15 hours of audiobooks a month, and Apple Music $11.99. Prices are regional and can change.

Downloads Stay in the App, and What the Play Data Safety Form Lists

Unlimited downloads songs, albums and playlists in any quality, but Amazon's help says the files play only inside the app and cannot be exported or copied to a CD. The Google Play safety form says app interactions may be shared with other companies, partly for advertising, and that user and device IDs are collected for the same purpose; it also lists voice recordings and, as optional, contacts. Apple's label lists identifiers and search history linked to you for Amazon's own marketing and declares no data used to track you. Reliability is the weak point: of 151 one- and two-star English Play reviews from 2026 we read, 36 describe playback stopping, buffering, freezing or crashing, and 15 say songs bought from Amazon went missing or were hard to reach.