After Google made YouTube Music available for free to the users of Google Home devices and supported speakers powered by Google Assistant, Amazon has also announced free access of Prime Music services for Echo users without having a Prime membership or Amazon Music Unlimited subscription.
The free music streaming service offered by the US-based company is ad-supported and is currently available only to the users in the United States. Also, the service comes with a few other caveats as well. As you should expect, the service works on Alexa-enabled devices, such as the Amazon Echo products, Sonos One, etc.
Similar to the restrictions from Google with YouTube Music on Google Home devices, you can’t play any song you like on the Alexa-enabled devices with this free service. The ad-supported version allows playing stations, so you can tell Alexa to play music from an artist or genre and it will play a station, which is basically a playlist.
But, if you want to be able to play a particular song without any ads, you can opt for the premium subscription of the Amazon Prime Music. It is priced at $3.99 per month to stream from Amazon Music Unlimited and $9.99/month to stream on non-Echo devices.
This will enable users to enjoy free music from Amazon on their devices instead of having to turn to a third-party free provider, like Spotify or Pandora. It could also push Echo owners to upgrade to the paid subscription services that Amazon offers.
