Amazon’s ‘Music Unlimited’ Offers Significant Deal for Echo Owners, Undercuts Apple Music

Amazon has just unveiled Music Unlimited, a streaming service that will compete directly with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, and has an extensive catalogue of tens of millions of songs backing it, according to The New York Times.

Adopting the familiar subscription model, Amazon Music Unlimited charges standard subscribers $10 a month, matching the rates for Apple Music and Spotify Premium. For Prime Music subscribers, the price has been slashed to $8 a month, while owners of Echo devices have the option of paying just $4 a month, though the service can only be used on Echo.

One drawback is that Music Unlimited comes with a shorter, 30-day trial period, versus Apple Music’s 90-day trial period.

The voice-controlled Echo speakers already offer access to streaming services like Spotify, iHeartRadio, and Pandora. In addition, users can request songs from Echo via Amazon’s Alexa voice-assistant. In addition to recognizing commands to crank up the thermostat, Alexa’s voice processing tech can handle song requests by lyrics or even incomplete titles, according to NPR, which is a part of Amazon’s quest to make Echo an integral part of the quintessential smart home.

Music Unlimited also comes with offline caching, which allows users to store songs on Echo for playback when disconnected from the Wi-Fi.