Totted up the content services we use each month and was a bit surprised at how an attempt at cord cutting has gotten a bit expensive. We use:

– Spotify £15

– Netflix £7.99

– Amazon Prime £7.99 (switched to £79 per year to save a bit of cash)

So that’s £31 per month on streaming/content services. Has anyone tried the Amazon Prime music service as an alternative to Spotify for families? Any drawbacks?

I’m not talking about Prime Unlimited Music which is a paid service, but the one that is bundled with Prime. Looks like it could be a good alternative to Spotify. I’ve been trying it via the browser and it seems ok. Just not sure if I can use it with an app instead because I use it with an aux cord in the garage a lot. It maybe relatively trivial to setup a music player in the garage, but I’d rather avoid that if possible. Also, not sure how it would work with 2 people sharing it.

What does STW think?

Yup it’s a bit crap unless you go unlimited.

I’ve wondered the same myself but haven’t got round to trying the Amazon Prime music service yet.  All the reviews I’ve read, rate it for price but criticise it’s catalogue (1 million for Amazon, 30 million for Spotify) and say the sound quality isn’t as good.  This has spurred me on to try the app so I will report back.

It’s OK, but a pretty limited selection. If you use it like a radio station you won’t notice so much but when you’ve a hankering for something specific there’s a fair chance it won’t be there.

Why not just use Spotify free on a tablet, 30s advert (usually for Spotify paid) isn’t worth £15 a month to get rid of.

I use the unlimited as it works well with Sonos. Not sure of the catalogue size but plenty enough for me.

Is Spotify £15 / month now? Sure we still pay £9.99 / month….

Spotify Family is £15 a month – gives you 6 accounts so good value.

The problem with my listening, is I find myself listening exclusively to the same stuff over and over again. I guess the only way to figure out how well it’ll work is to try Prime music for a month and see how it works out.

Wonder if there’s an API for it as well. Would be handy to figure out track overlap.

It’s a bit crap and you’ll wish you had a full service sooner or later – we went Apple Music as it fits with Sonos and Family – as a minor aside, as a musician who has earned some small amounts from PRS, Apple also paid the artists the best from the main contenders when I looked.

Spotify Family is £15 a month – gives you 6 accounts so good value.

Interesting, whenever the wife borrows my account I have to switch my phone to Airline mode and use cached playlists!

Basic Amazon Music is pretty limited.

It’s a nice bonus to have on top of the other Amazon Prime stuff (next day delivery, deals, TV and movies, free ebooks etc). It is enough to keep our kids happy who mostly listen to pop anyway, and it works quite well with Alexa.

But if you are into your music and like non-pop stuff then it probably won’t have everything you want. I certainly wouldn’t pay for Prime just for the music.

Graham, that’s a good point.  We were looking at upgrading to Spotify Family as our 12yo daughter is starting to kick us off.  I presume if she used the Amazon Prime it would have all the pop she wanted and leave the obscure ‘old persons rubbish’ we want to listen to.

I don’t listen to music much but thought there was actually a surprising amount of Prime music content (you’ll soon come across songs only available on unlimited but there’s still a huge amount of tracks on the free service). Prime unlimited had an offer on recently so was dirt cheap for a few months, not sure if it’s still available though.

Spotify Family is one of life’s bargains IMO 😃

Used to get the £9.99 sub free with Vodafone but now pay for the family sub.

I am a big fan and use it daily. Driving to work, at work and at home in workshop/ game room.

Tried amazon unlimited, but I just like how Spotify works, not sure if Amazon plays/introduces new artists after playing your selection or not but this has unlocked so much new music that has always been there but I was never exposed to it.

And we have so many play lists between myself, wife and son wouldn’t want to transfer them over.

The selection on Spotify is amazing, not much I have not found from years ago , some have so few plays its  listed only as less than 1000.

We’ve been using Prime music a fair amount recently with our echo dot, the kids like streaming lots of pop stuff, I listen to various play lists when cooking, me and the missus keep picking various old songs and albums from the 80s/90s/00s to reminisce over our Yoof, it’s not so bad and by default you also have old purchases as digitised content, stuff you’ve bought before i.e. it’s got a couple of slightly obscure albums against my account that I bought from Amazon on CD well over a decade ago, I can download the MP3 files for them too…

You can set up an Echo to stream from Spotify but only if you have a full paid Spotify sub. With prime it’ll let you stream quite a bit for free, without adverts and you can compile playlists too if you want, when you try to play something not included in prime it will simply tell you it’s not covered by your Prime music sub and ask if you want to pay for the single song or upgrade to the full music unlimited sub…

Basically they’re treating music like they have film and TV, there’s a fair bit covered under the Prime banner, and a bit more available if you are willing pay more…

I’d pay for one or the other, but certainly not both and it would depend on what devices you have to stream with, at present We’re happy enough with Spotify Free (Advertising and default shuffle function) and Prime music via the Echo dot…

You can set up an Echo to stream from Spotify but only if you have a full paid Spotify sub.

You can use the Echo just as a dumb Bluetooth speaker and then stream Spotify Free (or other things like YouTube) from your phone/tablet to the Echo,

You do lose the ability to control the music selection by voice though, as it is just acting as a speaker. But then you may be able to control your phone/tablet by voice anyway.

First reply nailed it.
Probably 60% of the stuff I search for is Unlimited only. They also take stuff off the free version every now and then. Not bad for something I haven’t paid for though.

Is the Unlimited offer still on for 99p (for 3 or 4 months)? Still, if it came to paying extra for Unlimited or Spotify, I’d be picking Spotify as I can access some very obscure stuff on there that isn’t on Unlimited.

For other options, Deezer does a 3 month for 99p intro, though I don’t know what the catalogue is like.

Oh and yes there is an Android app (and presumably iOS). The app is decent and it’s very easy to cast from.

Similar to others – actually use the Prime (non-unlimited) quite a bit on Sonus as I like their playlists – good for quickly putting something on for the kids to dance to or as background music.

We have a family Apple Music account though as you quickly bump into the limits if you want anything specific. It also replaced my old iTunes Match sub that let me stream anything in my library to my phone.

Been trying it for a couple of days. Some of my faves are missing, but maybe Unlimited will plug the gap. Still saves £8 a month which is not bad.

Any others to consider? Tidal?

Same the people above, I find the Prime Music is limited in content also the content isn’t there forever they remove stuff every now and then.

Not tried Spotify but many friends have Apple Music and I’m always impressed at the amount of weird and not so popular stuff they have.

I’m very tempted to sign up but same as the OP, I already spend a lot on streaming services and I still like buying CDs so seems a waste.

Toyed with the idea of having a little fund to buy and own music monthly. Would make me listen to albums a bit more. Should be cheap to get CDs second hand these days surely?

The problem with physical media is storage and accessibility I guess.

As per others. I use it since alongside the Prime Video, delivery and also the unlimited photo storage it seems an ok deal.

It hasnt got the best offerings but I find random playlists for background music its ok Tend to buy stuff alongside it though.

Tried it, but the upload interface for your own tunes was a bit limited and slow (it may have changed since). We now use Google Play Music – £15 get s six accounts so one for every family member, 20,000 of your own tunes as well as everything they have – which seems to cover pretty much everything.

Only possible issue is rumours they are merging it with YouTube music – not sure what that will do to pricing and membership options, and I really don’t want to be swamped with live versions/dodgy bootlegs/pan pipe versions/ versions performed by barking dogs/whatever when I search for a song!

invested in a sonos yesterday

surprised how little music I have access to

only things on my phone, prime, tune in radio

still that’ll keep me going for a few millennia……………………………….

So 3 weeks later…

– Most of the stuff I want is accessible, but the occasional album you really want to listen to isn’t. Super annoying.

– You can’t share Music with someone else. One person listening at a time only. Not sure if Unlimited allows you to share it with someone else though.