What you need to know
- Amazon Music Unlimited for Prime members now costs $9.99 per month, a $1 increase.
- The annual individual and family plans both jump $10 to $99.99 and $16.99, respectively.
- Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music have all received recent price hikes, too.
Last April, Amazon increased its Music Unlimited pricing by $1 to $8.99. Since then, all of Amazon's major music streaming competitors have followed suit with their own price hikes. Now we've come full circle 16 months later, as Amazon Music Unlimited now costs an additional $1 more, either $10/month or $100/year.
Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music have all jumped to $10.99 per month, meaning Music Unlimited is still more affordable at this new price — which is already showing on Amazon's website.
You do need a $99 Prime subscription to get this price, however; without Prime, Amazon Music Unlimited costs the same $10.99 monthly fee.
The Amazon Music Unlimited family plan, which doesn't require a Prime subscription and covers up to six family members, will now cost $16.99 per month or $169 per year.
Variety, which first reported the news, quotes Amazon as saying this price increase is meant "to help us bring you even more content and features" to the platform. This is, unsurprisingly, the exact same quote it released alongside its spring 2022 price increase.
Since the last hike, Amazon Music hasn't announced any new features or increases in artist payments to correspond with the extra money it receives from subscribers. It has 100 million songs available, but Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music all claim this number, too.
In fact, since adding lossless audio and spatial audio in 2021, Amazon Music hasn't made any major changes besides offering musicians' merch through their Music app. So we're curious what, if anything, this price hike will deliver to make Prime customers better off than with the other best music streaming services.
Spotify and YouTube Music both made similar statements with their price increases last month; Spotify said it would "keep innovating" with this extra subscription money, while YouTube Music claimed it needed that money "to continue delivering great service and features."
Ultimately, it's hard not to feel like the music streaming industry is simultaneously working in tandem to charge people more money while stagnating in actual innovation.
