Streaming platforms find themselves in a bit of a pickle in 2023; charge too little for their services and continue to lose money at a rather astonishing rate (Spotify) or price themselves outside of the mainstream and struggle to gain market share (Qobuz and TIDAL).
Amazon finds itself competing with Apple Music, YouTube, and Spotify for that larger slice of the market and has to be priced at the same level or less to remain competitive.
All 3 of its primary competitors have already hiked pricing, including Spotify which just raised the price of its individual streaming plan without ads in the U.S. to $10.99/month, the first such price hike since the service launched in the country in 2011.
Membership used to have its privileges but for Amazon Prime members, that comes out to a paltry $1 per month savings on their Amazon Music Unlimited plan going forward. Don’t spend it all in one place.
Amazon began notifying Prime customers of the pricing change on Wednesday. “To help us bring you even more content and features, we’re updating the prices of select Amazon Music Unlimited plans,” the company announced in an update on its website.
Starting September 19, 2023 the price of the Amazon Music Unlimited individual plan will increase from $8.99 to $9.99/month, which is still one dollar less than the comparable plan for non-Prime members (which increased to $10.99/month this February). The Amazon Music Unlimited family plan for Prime members, which offers up to six accounts, will go from $15.99 to $16.99/month.
The annual price for Amazon’s Music Unlimited for Prime individual plan will be increasing from $89 to $99/year, and the family plan is increasing $159 to $169/year.
A version of Amazon Music is still available to Prime members for no extra cost. That includes the full catalog of 100 million tracks, plus added hundreds of thousands of podcast episodes ad-free.
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ORT
August 18, 2023 at 2:43 am
I just switched to the Amazon Music Unlimited Family Plan to include my daughter and her husband and my older brother and his wife. I prefer Pandora but I have them on my Family Plan with Pandora too, I just wanted my family to have another choice and it doesn’t cost me that much more to provide it for them.
And yes, I can use my Firestick to decode Atmos for many of my musical choices. Should the mood strike me… 😉
ORT