Amazon launched their Amazon Music Unlimited (AMU) service just a few weeks ago. This is Amazon’s entry into the streaming music market, to compete with the likes of Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, and Google Music, and maybe even to one-up them with the exclusive Amazon Music Unlimited Side-by-Side feature where the artists talk about their music (we include a list of Side-by-Side artists and music below).
Amazon Music Unlimited is different from Amazon Prime Music in a couple of ways, one of the most notable being the sheer number of songs and other music tracks available for you to stream with Amazon Music Unlimited.
Where Amazon Prime Music allows you to stream about two million different tracks from the Amazon Music library, Amazon Music Unlimited currently has “tens of millions” of tracks in its library. Now, two million tracks may sound like a lot of music, and it is – if they are the songs or music you want. Clearly having access to tens of millions of songs on an unlimited basis gives you a lot more options for listening.
Note that this is all in the Amazon Music Library, not your own music library stored on Amazon (where Amazon Prime music allows you to upload 250 songs to the Amazon cloud (also known as “Amazon’s computers”) as part of your prime membership, and 250,000 if you want to pay an extra $24.99 a year. You can read how to upload music to your Amazon library here).
By contrast, Amazon Music Unlimited is purely a music streaming service, but, again, it has those tens of millions of songs and other music tracks (as we write this, we’re listening to an unending stream of baroque chamber music, for example).
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The other major feature launched with Amazon Music Unlimited is the “Side-by-Side” feature mentioned at the outset of this article. It’s sort of the AMU version of a director’s cut with the artist providing commentary. Of course, it’s not really side-by-side, it’s more “talk before music”, but it’s still pretty cool.
Amazon calls the Side-by-Side with music combos ‘playlists’, and you can invoke and listen to the Side-by-Side commentary if you have an Echo by saying “Alexa (or “Echo”), play Side-by-Side with {artist name}.”
(Also if you have an Echo, one other feature of Amazon Music Unlimited is the Echo version of ‘name that tune’, meaning that your Echo can find songs for you based only on a few lyrics. To do this, say “Alexa, play that song that goes {some fragment of lyrics},” such as “Alexa play that song that goes ‘Annie sits you down to eat'”, and your Echo will find Joni Mitchell’s ‘Ladies of the Canyon’ for you.)
If you don’t have an Echo, fear not – you can also listen to Side-by-Side commentary by searching for the artist you want and “side-by-side” in either the Amazon Music desktop app or the Amazon Music mobile app. In fact, you can get a fairly complete list of artists with Side-by-Side commentary by doing that search.
List of Amazon Music Unlimited Artists Providing Side-by-Side Commentary with Their Music
As of the writing of this article, the following artists have provided Side-by-Side commentary commentary to their music, with more being added regularly:
- Norah Jones
- OneRepublic
- Michael Bublé
- Frenship
- Tyler Farr
- Jakubi
- Dub FX
- Sting
- Florida Georgia Line
- Kongos
- Jason Aldean
- Chris Tomlin
- Two Door Cinema Club
- Passenger
- Jake Owen
- Kent Jones
- Wrabel
- Old Dominion
- Idina Menzel
- The Pretty Reckless
- Zara Larson
- Lindsey Stirling
- Maren Morris
The Amazon Music mobile app is available in the usual places:
To download and install the Amazon Music desktop app on your computer, go to the app download page on Amazon (see links below), and “purchase” the free app. After you hit purchase, your confirmation page will give you a link to your ‘Games and Software Library’ on Amazon.
Clicking that link will take you to something looking like this:
Download and open the Amazon Music desktop app, and when you are subscribed to Amazon Music Unlimited, searching the Unlimited library will be one of your options. Do a search for “side-by-side”.
…and scroll down to ‘Playlists’:
You can download the Amazon Music desktop app from Amazon here:
Download Amazon Music desktop app for Mac
Download Amazon Music desktop app for PC
“Now, all of this is well and good,” we can hear you thinking, “but how much does it cost?”
The full Amazon Music Unlimited package, meaning you can stream and listen to it anywhere, on any device, is $7.99 a month for all you can eat. By contrast, Spotify Premium and Apple Music are both $9.99 a month. Amazon also has an upcoming family package with “all the benefits of the individual plan for up to 6 family members” for $14.99 a month.
What’s more, Amazon offers a free 30-day trial of the full package. You can [destination content has been removed at other end :~( ].
Now, if you are going to listen to Amazon Music Unlimited only on your Amazon Echo, and nowhere else, you can sign up through your Echo for only $3.99 a month!
To sign up for the Amazon Echo-only Music Unlimited service, simply tell your Echo (or Dot or Tap) “Alexa (or “Echo”), try Amazon Music Unlimited.”
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