Amazon’s free Spotify competitor is here. Just ask Alexa

By Parker Hall Published April 19, 2019

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Alexa lovers and Echo device owners have yet another feature to get excited about today, as Amazon has officially launched the rumored ad-based music streaming service we first caught wind of a few days ago.

The new streaming service allows owners of Echo devices to choose from millions of the most popular tracks on the internet, with Amazon reportedly signing deals with major labels to allow it to access to 2 million of their top tunes — reportedly the same catalog available to those who are part of its Prime Music service. Songs can be requested based on genre, album, or playlist, with Alexa quickly pulling up the music for playback, with a few ads in between.

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It makes sense that the company would look to add a free, ad-based tier to its paid Amazon Music Unlimited service, given that Echo devices used to pull up requested tracks from Spotify or Pandora, essentially advertising for those independent platforms. Now, Amazon has a direct funnel to encourage Echo owners to subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited, without having to send listeners to another ad-supported service first.

Amazon Music Unlimited does offer a pretty significant upside when compared to this new free service, in that it boasts a catalog of 50 million songs, compared to the free services 2 million. That paltry number of songs on the free side also pales in comparison to what’s offered by Spotify’s free tier, which offers unhindered access to every song on the paid version of the Swedish music streaming service, but with often lengthy ads in between.

The news of Amazon’s free music streaming service comes at a busy time for the streaming side of the massive internet retailer, with Amazon and Google also announcing that the cold war that kept YouTube off of Amazon’s Fire TV devices — and Amazon Prime Video off of Google’s Chromecast — has thawed.

Even though the new service doesn’t offer the same number of tunes as Spotify’s free tier, it is nice to see Amazon designing its own free music service in-house, as it should be even better integrated into Echo devices. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for on the new service, you can still turn to Spotify, Pandora, or any of the myriad of other streaming services supported on Echo devices.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Parker Hall is a writer and musician from Portland, OR. He is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin…

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Spotify adds new, cheaper Basic plan without the audiobooks

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Spotify on Friday announced that it's adding a new Basic tier to its streaming music plans that costs $11 per month and that removes the monthly audiobook listening time.

The new Spotify Basic plan, which is available only to U.S. subscribers at the moment, strips away access to the 15 hours a month of audiobooks and gives subscribers access to just music and podcasts, which users uninterested in audiobooks might appreciate.

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What is Spotify? Music, pricing, and features explained

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Spotify is the first name that comes to mind when you think of music streaming services. Love it or hate it, Spotify is currently the most popular music-streaming service, boasting 615 million users and more than 239 million subscribers, putting it ahead of competitors like Apple Music. But what exactly is Spotify, and how does it really work? We're answering all your questions with this deep dive into what you can expect from Spotify.
What is Spotify?

If you spend even a little time online, you've probably heard of Spotify. It's a popular free and paid music-streaming service founded in Stockholm in 2006 by Swedish friends Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. Fun fact: the name happened by fluke when the partners were shouting names back and forth from different rooms in Ek's Stockholm flat, and Ek misheard one of Lorentzon's suggestions as "Spotify." They later backtracked the meaning as a combination of spot and identify, and there you have it.
Spotify today is a behemoth of a streaming service that also offers access to podcasts, videos, and highly tailored playlists driven by your unique usage. With several plan tiers to choose from, Spotify's free version lets you listen to unlimited music, podcasts, and even videos, so you can explore your taste without shelling out a thing, but you do have to endure ads and limited functionality (more on that below). It does offer much more robust paid options (more below, too), but the free version is more than enough for the casual listener.
Spotify is also quite device-versatile, so you can use it on your smartphone, tablet, computer, laptop, TV, smartwatch, gaming console, and even in your car. You get the expected, intuitive controls like play/pause, next/previous, loop a song/playlist, and save favorites. But that's not all. There's a lot that Spotify offers, so let's break down what you can look forward to.
Spotify features: music, podcasts, audiobooks, and more

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Spotify gives you access to an incredible amount of music (more than 100 million songs), podcasts (6 million) and audiobooks (350,000) -- so it's no wonder the music streaming service has become culturally ubiquitous, with well over 239 million subscribers as of 2024. That's more than both Apple Music and Amazon Music.

If you want to get the best of Spotify, you'll want to sign up for a Premium account that, as of June 2024, for new subscribers, costs $12 a month for an individual membership. There are also subscription options for two people (Spotify Premium Duo, $17 a month), families (Spotify Premium Family, $20 a month), and students (Spotify Premium Student, $6 a month).