These ball-washing bastards at Spotify are jumping on this price increase bandwagon and that's my cue to switch to Amazon Music which I get for free with a Prime membership.

Has anyone switched here? How does it compare?

I'm actually glad they did because we are going through every single bill we pay each month and looking at dropping these services we don't think are worth it anymore or don't use as much as we thought we would.

Free user here [Spotify]
Will have to let my wife know it's going up, as she's a premium user.

I use the Prime Music we get with the annual membership, they made some changes, for the free service they added a lot more music choices - good, then they eliminated the ability to re-play songs, limit the amount of skips you can do.

It’s been a couple of years, but I tried Amazon,, Pandora, Apple Music, and Tidal. For me, Spotify was the best service.

I did not know there was a price increase coming, but I figure I’ll be paying it because I listen to Spotify a lot.

I’ve never had Spotify but I like Amazon Music. I have a Prime membership, but I pay for the upgraded version. $79/year last time.

I also recently paid $109 for one year of Apple Music, which includes the Apple Classical app.

The Amazon Music “My Likes and More” is my favorite music playlist. I doubt that I’ll buy Apple Music again.

I listen mostly to classical music.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
Free user here [Spotify]
Will have to let my wife know it's going up, as she's a premium user.

She'll know the next time she opens the app. It's plastered over the whole screen announcing the price change.

Amazon Music is not very good unless perhaps you pay for the Unlimited service (which I don't).

You can no longer select an album and have it play. Doing so now will result at best of playback in random order of the songs on the album and generally also results in random songs of the perceived genre (loosely speaking and as amazon perceives it based on what you selected) playback.

This is particularly undesired when you want to hear a particular song and/or if you want to play classical (where, for example, the play back order is important, let alone the random choices in pieces (different works, different composers, different artists, etc).

I use amazon music far less then I used to (perhaps that was their goal). I'm considering a pay service but undecided between apple and amazon; leaning toward the former.

If you just want something to play random selections of music for a given genre (based on some song or artist choice), it may be good enough.

After trying Pandora, Spotify, and Amazon ~10 years ago, I went with Amazon, and I've had zero complaints with it ever since.

(Yes, I do pay for Unlimited.)

Amazon Music for free is ok for very casual use. You'll want the pay version as a Spotify equivalent, though

I have Spotify to find new music. Many lesser known artists only publish there and Bandcamp (I buy on free fridays when everything goes to the artists)

Qubuz for high Rez files. I also have Apple Music from an Apple one acct

This message has been edited. Last edited by: snwghst,

Yup, as others have said the free/prime version of Amazon Music is not that good.
I spend a lot of time in a vehicle most of the week and I love music.

So I have Amazon Music (Paid Version)

Pandora (still rocking the original $2.99 a month plan). This is how I go about finding new/old music I have not heard before and has a great lullaby station for putting the kiddos to sleep.
So the music I find on here gets added to my Amazon lists.

SiriusXM ($5.99 a month) I only have this for the Catholic Channel so I can listen to Seize the Day with Gus Lloyd each morning. If it weren’t for his show I would not bother with the subscription. But since I do have it I listen to Yacht Rock pretty frequently. Though I could easily use Pandora or Amazon for the same.

I find Amazon paid version to be worth every penny.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:

Pandora (still rocking the original $2.99 a month plan).

I don't see anything like this on their site. Are you grandfathered on this plan?

So help me understand this:

If I'm an Amazon Prime user, I get a Spotify-like music service via that but it still has ads and I cannot skip songs? So it's basically like the free version of Spotify?

If I pay $12 a month, I get no ads and skipping (and I presume higher quality bitrate?)

My wife and I both use Spotify so it would have to be something like their Family plan.

I prefer the High Res format of Qobuz.
My next choice would be Tidal although I think the others are starting to offer the higher bit rate streams.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
So help me understand this:

If I'm an Amazon Prime user, I get a Spotify-like music service via that but it still has ads and I cannot skip songs? So it's basically like the free version of Spotify?

If I pay $12 a month, I get no ads and skipping (and I presume higher quality bitrate?)

My wife and I both use Spotify so it would have to be something like their Family plan.

On Prime music, the standard program with your Prime membership, you can skip songs but you are limited on how many you can skip in a session (logged in) there are no ads.

Link

Amazon Music Unlimited has a 90 day trial going on now, they do have individual or family plans, better bit rate, spatial audio, 100 million tunes....

Amazon Music Unlimited Link

quote:

Originally posted by CoolRich59:

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:

Pandora (still rocking the original $2.99 a month plan).

I don't see anything like this on their site. Are you grandfathered on this plan?

Yes, I probably signed up over 15 years ago for like .99 a month. My Dad bought me a Logitech Squeeze Box (wifi internet music steamer) long before smart phones were a thing. No ads, 20 skips or so (but if I need to skip more I just log out and log back in). They have bumped the price a couple times since then but still worth $2.99

I have Prime, but I don’t use Amazon Music - free or paid. I tried the paid version, but I found I liked TIDAL’s layout better. I’m happy with TIDAL right now, especially with the military discount, but I could see me jumping ship to Amazon or Apple if the price increases too much.

I, too, listen mostly to classical, so I would probably look back at Apple since they have that classical app, which they didn’t have during my free stints with them.

Also, around the house, I stream Sirius/XM through my surround sound, and I’m really happy with it. For classical in the car over satellite, it sounds good, even better while streamed. Also, I will sometimes stream it through my good system so I can listen to Martin Goldsmith’s show on 76 during the weekends.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
So help me understand this:

If I'm an Amazon Prime user, I get a Spotify-like music service via that but it still has ads and I cannot skip songs? So it's basically like the free version of Spotify?

If I pay $12 a month, I get no ads and skipping (and I presume higher quality bitrate?)

My wife and I both use Spotify so it would have to be something like their Family plan.

On Prime music, the standard program with your Prime membership, you can skip songs but you are limited on how many you can skip in a session (logged in) there are no ads.

Link

Amazon Music Unlimited has a 90 day trial going on now, they do have individual or family plans, better bit rate, spatial audio, 100 million tunes....

Amazon Music Unlimited Link

When I was on the free version the catalog was somewhat limited, too.

All of my android phone friends use Spotify but I’ve not tried it beyond the links they send me. We’re on YouTube premium which includes YouTube music and it’s recently increased to something like $25/month. I use it daily and like the ad free service but it’s getting ridiculous.

I’m not going to Amazon but I’m watching this thread for alternatives.

I've used them all and have settled for 90% Tidal. I also have Apple Music as my kid has the student plan and we have a lot of Apple devices in the house. I've tried Qobuz twice but their CS is horrible and non responsive. The big advantage to them over Tidal is the ability to also buy FLAC and other files. Oh I have Sirius too, mainly for easy background music, NFL and NHL, etc. but the compressed sound isn't up to par with other Hi-Rez services. It's only $5/mo.