Amazon Music Unlimited is getting more expensive, making it the latest music streaming service to raise its prices.
From February, subscribers in the UK and US will pay £1 / $1 more per month (opens in new tab), bringing the price up to £10.99/$10.99 (the student tier rises to £5.99/$5.99). That’s in line with Apple Music, which raised its prices in October.
Amazon’s price increase takes effect on February 21. The support page explains that the increased cost is “to help us provide you with even more content and features”.
This leaves Spotify and Tidal the only major services to charge less than £10/$10 a month for their basic ad-free tiers (Apple and Amazon both charge £10.99/$10.99, while Deezer charges £11.99/$10.99). costs 10.99). As a result, a Spotify price increase is more a matter of ‘when’ than ‘if’.
The economic situation is putting all sorts of pressure on businesses and streaming services are no different. Spotify is reportedly plans for layoffs (opens in new tab) all this week to cut costs. There’s still no sign of its Hi-Fi hi-res streaming level it first announced two years ago – the continued silence on the matter has become beyond frustrating and is now seen as a joke within the tech industry.
Spotify is holding an event in March, but it is thought that there is still no news about its HiFi level. The $9.99 price has remained the same since its US launch in 2011, so some would say a price increase is long overdue. CEO Daniel Ek recently hinted that higher prices – at least in the US – were imminent.
Amazon Music Unlimited gives subscribers access to 100 million songs in lossless CD quality, plus “millions” of high-resolution songs. Amazon Prime subscribers pay a little less for Music Unlimited (£8.99 / $8.99 a month – this price also increased last year), or they can stick with Amazon Music Prime, which comes with Prime for free and ad-free listening offers lossless quality and only lets you shuffle songs in an album, playlist, or discography.
LAKE:
An excruciating timeline of our six-year wait for Spotify HiFi
Everything we know about Spotify Hi-Fi so far
Hi-res music streaming services compared: what do you need to register for?