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Amazon is currently undergoing major cost-cutting efforts to address its recent drop in its share prices. These include a massive round of layoffs that will affect 18,000 of its staff and the recent announcement of sunsetting its charity-donating AmazonSmile feature. In line with these efforts, Amazon is also increasing the price of its Music Unlimited streaming service in the US and UK from February 21st.
The price of the Amazon Music Unlimited individual plan will increase from $9.99 (£9.99) to $10.99 (£10.99) per month, while the student plan will change from $4.99 (£4.99) to $5.99 (£5.99) per month. According to the company, this price increase will “bring you even more content and features.”
Amazon Music Unlimited subscription tiers and features
Amazon’s Music Unlimited is the premium subscription option of their music streaming service, which provides access to a vast library of 100 million songs in high-quality, lossless CD-quality, and “millions” of songs in lossless hi-res. Additionally, it also offers a discounted rate for Music Unlimited to its Prime subscribers, which is currently priced at $8.99.
However, this subscription tier is different from “Amazon Music Prime”, which comes free with Prime subscriptions. It does not include lossless quality, and the playback is shuffled for albums, playlists, or artist discographies. Lastly, there is a free version of the service, like Spotify and Apple Music, which includes ads.
Amazon follows other streaming giants
This is not the only time Amazon has raised its prices for its music streaming service. Back in May, the discounted Amazon Music Unlimited plan for Amazon Prime customers increased from $7.99 to $8.99 per month. However, non-Prime members did not experience a change and still had to pay $9.99 per month. But, this price increase comes in line with the one announced by competitor Apple last October when it said it would increase the price of Apple Music from $9.99 to $10.99 a month.
The biggest player in the music streaming industry, Spotify, hasn’t raised its prices in over a decade in the US. But with a deteriorating economic climate, a price hike might not be far away. As CEO Daniel Ek noted during the company’s earnings call in October. “[Price increases] is one of the things that we would like to do,” Ek said. “I feel really good about sort of this upcoming year and what that means in pricing in relation to our service.”