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Amazon increases the cost of its Music Unlimited plans

By Trevor Mogg August 15, 2023

Amazon Music Unlimited is the latest streaming service to announce a rise in its subscription fees.

The platform’s individual plan for Prime members will rise from $9 to $10 per month from September 19, the company confirmed on Tuesday. This is $1 less than non-Prime members are required to pay following a $1 increase to $11 earlier this year.

Similarly, the e-commerce giant is also raising the cost of its Amazon Music Unlimited family plan for those with a Prime subscription, from $16 to $17 per month.

Subscribers to both the individual plan and family plan have the option to pay for a full year, and both of these will go up by $10 to $99 and $169, respectively.

In an update to its website, the company said the increases had been made “to help us bring you even more content and features.”

Amazon offers several tiers for music streaming, including a free, ad-supported Amazon Music service, a paid Unlimited offering for non-Prime members, and a cheaper paid Unlimited version for Prime members.

As you’d expect with a free version, it comes with various limitations. For example, shuffle is the only option for listening, so you can’t pick out a particular track that you’d like to listen to. And it also offers considerably fewer tracks compared to the Prime-based tiers.

For serious music fans, Amazon’s Music Unlimited tier is favored among its options as it offers the freedom to explore more than 100 million tracks, with most of the content playable in lossless HD format and some in Ultra HD quality.

The decision by Amazon to increase the cost of its Music Unlimited subscription plan follows similar moves by Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music in recent months.

This is the third increase for subscribers to Music Unlimited in just over a year, with Amazon hoping that the hikes don’t scare away subscribers or prompt them to try out competing services.

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