Amazon Music—Better than Spotify?

5 days ago

5 min read

Overview:

I recently tried out Amazon Music Unlimited after enjoying a three-month free trial. Overall, I found it to be a decent service with some great features. Amazon Music is globally recognized and competes well with Apple Music in terms of audio quality. However, as an everyday listener, I did notice a few caveats that made my experience somewhat mixed. Having explored various music streaming services, both paid and free, including Apple Music, YT Music, Spotify, and Jio Saavn, I feel I have a solid understanding of the competition. Here’s a breakdown of my thoughts on using Amazon Music Unlimited.

Review:

Subscription Cost:

So, let's clear the expenses before we move forward, because if anything hurts your wallet, it's hard to proceed with it. Amazon Music has basically two versions: one is just Amazon Music, which is included with your Prime Membership (not with Prime Lite). This version works normally, except that you can't play songs in the order you wish, as shuffle is turned on permanently, similar to how Spotify does it on the free tier.

Then there is Amazon Music Unlimited, where the shuffle lock is removed, for which Prime Members need to pay ₹99/month and non-Prime members pay ₹119/month. The prices are quite good, less than Spotify and the same as Apple Music. But the one thing I feel absurd is that Prime Members need to pay an additional fee just to enjoy their music. I mean, they're already paying a hefty Prime subscription. Well, this is just corporate greed at its best. We already discussed how corporate greed has ruined most of the video streaming services (except Netflix) here. Do check it out if you're interested.

So overall, good pricing for non-prime members, please make unlimited included for Prime Members.

Music Library:

Amazon Music Home Screen
An Album on Amazon Music

Well, I believed Amazon Music would mostly have all the songs I need, and well, it did, most of the time. The thing is, this fully depends on what songs you listen to, so this is subjective. Amazon will have all the top-tier songs from blockbuster artists, like Olivia Rodrigo, Harry Styles, One Direction, and everyone else you can name in 10 seconds. But even if it has the songs I needed, I had trouble discovering them, which I'll explain further.

It has a good collection of Asian songs too, including playlists for OSTs from K Dramas like Business Proposal, but don't think it has all songs either. For example, it didn't have OSTs of WIFTY! For those of you who don't know, it's one of the most popular C Dramas ever, so I had to use Spotify just to listen to it, despite not getting the highest quality or having to deal with ads.

I also missed user-created playlists from Spotify or YouTube. I mean, they do exist, but they're not that great, like there aren't as many as I would usually need. So the music library, I'd say, is sufficient, but still not as good as Spotify or YT Music. So if you listen to a mix of popular and niche artists, you may need to switch to other apps.

Audio Quality:

Sony 360 Reality Audio versus Stereo Sound

So, this is where I did like using Amazon Music, it definitely is a step-up from most music apps offering better sound quality. There are 4 Levels of Audio Quality as follows:

Quality	Abbreviation	Type	Depth	Sampling Rate	Bit Rate
Standard Definition	SD	Lossy Compressed	16-bit	48kHz	320kbps
High Definition	HD	Lossless CD Quality	16-bit	44.1kHz	850kbps
Ultra High Definition	UHD	Higher-than-CD Quality	24-bit	44.1-192kHz	3730kbps
Spatial Audio	Dolby Atmos	Immersive	16-bit	48kHz	448/768kbps
Spatial Audio	360 Reality Audio	Immersive	16-bit	48kHz	640-1024kbps

*Some bit-rates shown are an average calculation, and referenced from Amazon provided Data.

The app does show you the quality of the current track on the now playing screen. You can also check whether your device can play the same file, and if your output device can deliver the original audio as is. Not all tracks support the highest quality; most tracks I've played support up to HD or UHD, but it's still quite an improvement if you're switching from SD quality. Dolby Atmos and Sony's 360 Reality Audio are a step forward, especially with Dolby Atmos-enabled smartphones and headsets. So if you're an audiophile or just enjoy high-quality music, it won't disappoint.

User Experience:

Now PLaying Screen
Lyrics beautifully flowing

The app's design is quite simple and may feel outdated at times, but that's not the bad part. The thing that will mostly annoy users is discovery, by which I mean searching for a particular song or album. Most apps like Spotify easily learn patterns and history, which makes the song appear seconds after typing three letters or so. But Amazon doesn't seem to learn; it makes me type a lot before I can see the song or album I've already listened to. Oftentimes, I've got to type the full name perfectly without spelling mistakes just to find it. Spotify understands typos and suggests the song you meant to search for.

So, hence, I felt a lot of resistance in just opening the app, knowing how much time I'd waste just searching for a song. Amazon offers you the option to transfer playlists from other services using a third-party service, and so I did, only to never use them. I thought Amazon would learn from my playlists and suggest similar songs, but it didn't. I mean, this could be easily programmed.

So yeah, overall these are things I didn't like, which hurt my experience the most. The recommendations when I listened to songs normally have been overall good, with me discovering new songs that I ended up liking. It does mix up between songs I may know and those that are new to me, which is good. I also felt the way the lyrics show up and the X-Ray feature, which shows artist/album details, was good. The high-quality cover art is also displayed in a very clean way. Okay, so the experience was a hit and miss, I'd say.

Conclusion:

So as you've seen, I've loved the audio quality I get to enjoy, but the app experience needs to be improved. If I just play a song and let Amazon handle the rest, I'm good. But the moment I want to manually play a song or search for a niche song/album, that's where things get difficult. Plus, Amazon charging Prime members an additional fee to freely use the app is absurd. So taking all points into consideration, I'll give this service a good 3.5/5. Audio quality is great, but if there's resistance in me opening the app itself, that's the problem. Amazon does need to improve their search prediction engine, recommend songs to users based on their imported playlists, and try to get more niche artists onboard.

So yeah, that ends my review for another music streaming service. Thank you for reading and supporting ByteSync Network up until now. We hope to continue to publish more content soon.

This is Noah for ByteSync Network signing out.

30.10.2026