Amazon is raising the price of its music streaming service, the company has revealed in a new FAQ. From May 5th, Amazon Prime subscribers will have to spend $8.99 (£8.99) a month or $89 (£89) a year for the key to Music Unlimited, up from $7.99 (£7.99) and $79 (£79) respectively.
In addition, the cost of the single-device plan — which lets you listen to the whole library but only from a single Echo or Fire TV gadget — is also increasing from $3.99 (£3.99) to $4.99 (£4.99) a month.
If you’re not a Prime member, the cost of Amazon Music Unlimited is intact at $9.99 (£9.99).
As Engadget notes, the price shift eliminates the discount that Amazon Prime subscribers get when expending on Amazon Music on top of their regular monthly subscription to Amazon.
So rather than bringing a $2 a month discount, they now get just $1 off approximated to non-Prime subscribers. News of the price increase comes weeks after Amazon expanded its Prime subscription prices for the first time in four years from $119 to $139 annually or $12.99 to $14.99 monthly.
Costs For Non-Prime Members Are Remaining The Same
Amazon does contain a paired-down version of its music streaming service with a standard Prime subscription. Still, it features a limited catalog of just 2 million songs (approximated to 90 million with Unlimited). There’s also no support for lossless CD-quality or hi-res music streams without spending for Unlimited.
Amazon Music is often noted as the world’s third-largest music streaming service after Spotify and Apple Music. As of Q2 last year, research agency Midia said that Apple Music (which usually costs $9.99 a month) had around 78.6 million subscribers, corresponding to Amazon Music (including both Prime Music and Music Unlimited) with just over 68.1 million.
Meanwhile, Spotify ($9.99 a month) included 180 million premium subscribers at the end of the previous year.