Amazon Music vs Apple Music—2023 review

April 14, 2020

It's time to compare Amazon Music and Apple Music. Want to know who the winner is? Read our article and find out!

Streaming music services are a big deal nowadays. Especially when you are stuck at home. But you don't have to go out to buy a new CD by your favorite artist or wait for the ring bell of a delivery driver at your door to listen to brand new music.

With music services like Amazon Music or Apple Music, everything is much easier. All you need is just one click and… boom! All your favorite music you want to listen to is ready in a few seconds. Fast, easy, and (relatively) cheap.

Today we're going to compare Amazon Music vs Apple Music to find out which one is better. At first sight, they may look similar. They offer access to millions of songs, albums, playlists, and artists. Moreover, they allow you to listen to music or radio wherever you are and you can discover new music every day—without any limits. It means that you can have all the music in one place. But Amazon Music, as well as Apple Music, is not flawless. They have their own pros and cons, which we'll describe in this article.

In this article:

  1. How much is Amazon Music Unlimited?

  2. How much is an Apple Music subscription?

  3. How many songs are on Amazon Music Unlimited?

  4. How many songs are on Apple Music?

  5. Is Amazon Music's sound quality as good as Apple Music?

  6. Application interface and features – Amazon Music Unlimited

  7. Application interface and features – Apple Music

  8. Pros and Cons of Amazon Music

  9. Pros and Cons of Apple Music

  10. Amazon Music vs Apple Music—the winner?

HOW MUCH IS AMAZON MUSIC UNLIMITED?

The regular price for Amazon Music Unlimited is on the same level as its competitor – $10.99 per month for new subscribers. But, if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you pay only $9.99 per month or $99 per year for an annual subscription. At this moment we have to underline that there's a difference between Amazon Prime Music and Amazon Music Unlimited.

Amazon Prime Music is included with Amazon Prime and you don't have to pay any additional costs.

You can listen to music for free, but the music library and list of playlists or artists are much smaller in this version. But coming back to Amazon Music Unlimited, which is the main topic of our comparison—they offer also three plans: Individual, or Student plan, Single Device Plan, and Family if you want to use it along with your friends.

The price may vary in each of these plans of Amazon Music.

After the free trial period, the subscription renews each month. But no matter which music streaming app you'll choose, you can cancel the subscription at any time.

As Amazon Music Unlimited is a new player in a music streaming platform game, the prices are quite similar in both cases, but if you want to save just a little bit more money – we recommend you choose Amazon Music Unlimited.

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HOW MUCH IS AN APPLE MUSIC SUBSCRIPTION?

Apple Music offers a 1-month trial. Similar to Amazon Music, but if you're lucky you might get a limited-time deal and get up to three months. You will have enough time to test and discover all the premium features before you decide to buy a full subscription.

But what offers you a premium subscription? All good things. You can download songs and listen to them offline, choose an album from the countless catalogs, create playlists, listen to the many radio stations, and many more. Everything is ad-free and without any limits.

You may be wondering: “Okay, it sounds amazing but how much is this going to cost me?”

Apple Music's cost for unlimited music is $10.99 per month in the United States. This is the regular price, but it may vary because when you decide to choose the full description, you have a choice of three plans. The cheapest option is for students because when you're studying at University the cost of Apple Music is only $5.99 per month. Also, when you want to share all the goods of unlimited music with your family, there's a family plan in which up to six people can join and the cost is $16.99 per month. Sounds like a good deal.

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If you want to know more about the pricing of Apple Music, take a look at our blog post: How Much is Apple Music?

Let's move on further. Now it's time to compare the music libraries.

HOW MANY SONGS ARE ON AMAZON MUSIC UNLIMITED?

Amazon Music offers now over 100 million songs ready to stream ad-free and download them for offline listening without any limits. A cool feature, that is missing in almost each music service is the option that shows the lyrics of the song you're listening to on your screen. But on the other side, if you want to read the biography in the artist's profile, there's no such possibility.

Of course, you can always move your playlists from one music streaming service to another. In case of moving a playlist from your Apple Music library to Amazon Music check out our tutorial on how to do it well. Read more about ]Moving Playlists From Apple Music to Amazon Music here.](https://freeyourmusic.com/blog/moving-playlists-from-apple-music-to-amazon-music)

HOW MANY SONGS ARE ON APPLE MUSIC?

Apple Music also offers you over 100 million songs and exclusive content such as special music videos and interviews including curated playlists based on your music taste. That's a great opportunity for music perks. Connect your Apple Music account and iCloud Music Library and you'll be able to store up to 100,000 songs in one place.

Once you've become a new subscriber by additional cost either of the Apple Music or Amazon Music Unlimited service, you gain unlimited access to a vast library and listen to your favorite artists and top songs or just newly discovered music included on a dozen of great playlists or albums.

However, the numbers don't lie. Even though Apple Music and Amazon Music both offer 100M songs, Apple Music allows users to upload music files, so it simply means that you can upload your own personal music library. Regarding this matter, if you're not an Apple Music subscriber yet, we'd recommend considering it and checking Apple Music features, because this streaming service is the winner of this category and we have a draft in our comparison.

IS AMAZON MUSIC SOUND QUALITY AS GOOD AS APPLE MUSIC?

When comparing the sound quality of Amazon Music and Apple Music, several key factors come into play. Both platforms offer a range of audio quality options to cater to different listener preferences.

Apple Music is considered to be one of the best platforms for audiophiles. Recently, Apple announced that there have been waves made with its spatial audio technology. This innovation takes music audio to the next level by creating an immersive and three-dimensional listening experience. It uses a high-quality bitrate of 256kbps with AAC files (Advanced Audio Coding), which means that the audio quality is impressive. It may be interesting that the sound quality is better when your device is connected to Wi-Fi than while using a personal data transmission. That's a smart thing that allows you to save your data, but you can change this in the settings of the app if you want to have a high audio quality sound all the time.

How does it look with Amazon Music? Unfortunately, Amazon does not provide us with accurate values ​​for the music and audio quality. However, it was recently announced that Amazon Music has recently made strides by introducing lossless audio, a feature that provides music enthusiasts with the opportunity to experience their favorite tracks in an exceptionally high-fidelity format. All we have is just a verbal description of the quality you can choose. At the highest setting, however, hardly anyone should complain – the listening experience is still pleasant to your ears unless you're an audiophile.

In summary, both Amazon Music's emphasis on lossless audio and Apple Music's focus on spatial audio showcase their commitment to elevating the sound quality and overall enjoyment for their users, however as Amazon Music is still a mystery for us, we'll give a point to Apple Music.

APPLICATION INTERFACE AND FEATURES – AMAZON UNLIMITED MUSIC

You can listen to Amazon Music on your web browser, on your PC or Mac and Android, or iPhone. First things first, let's start with the web browser player.

The Amazon Music web browser interface is clear and intuitive. You won't find there any fancy widgets. Everything is in perfect order. The web browser is just like we are supposed to be. It offers all the most important things that a music streaming platform should have. You can choose songs to listen to, search, and create a playlist.

You'll find there are also radios dedicated to artists and music genres. But Amazon Music web browser is not enough and many of you want to play music on computers or phones.

So how does it look with applications? After launching the Amazon Music app on the computer, you'll see something completely different from what was on the web browser.

The interface is in dark colors and it's not that intuitive. We have a bunch of new options, and most of them we're going to discover by accident. But, the PC version of Amazon Music still fulfills its task—it allows us to stream music. We just need a little bit more time to discover all the features that Amazon Music offers us.

Also, the Amazon Music mobile app offers us quite a “heavy” design. Everything is in dark colors, but still, the navigation is one of the pros of the app, because it's hard to get lost in the app as everything is shown by big buttons. As the navigation is good, we can't say the same thing about the design.

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But how does it compare to Apple Music?

APPLICATION INTERFACE AND FEATURES – APPLE MUSIC

Apple Music stays with the simple and minimalistic design that we've used to get familiar with. Maintained in light colors and pictures that show us the album covers, the mobile app is very easy to navigate—even if you're using it for the first time. Buttons that are visible at the bottom of your phone screen allow you to go to the section you want with just one tap. We can definitely say the same thing about the computer version of the Apple Music app, which looks like a bigger (and more advanced version) of the mobile app. Everything creates a well-designed space for listening to music.

Apple Music comes with a great radio—Apple Music 1. Live music streamed 24/7 by music DJs and journalists? Yes, please!

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Even if you've found a nice playlist on Apple Music you can easily transfer it to Amazon Music for free. And vice versa.

There can be only one winner in this category – and it's of course Apple Music.

We could compare things such as social sharing and discovering music but… these are the things that Amazon Music still has to work on. If you want to read more about the features that Apple Music offers, you can go to the article on our blog where we described Apple Music in more detail: Spotify vs. Apple Music – Which one you should choose in 2023.

PROS AND CONS OF AMAZON MUSIC

Here it is. Let's welcome everybody to the more advanced version of Amazon Prime Music! If you like new things, you have a free way to test Amazon Music Unlimited. The music library is large (you can find freshly released albums as well as playlists with the biggest classic hits), so it sounds like all the important features that a music streaming service should have been there.

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Price: $10.99 for non-Amazon Prime users, and $9.99 if you decide on a Prime membership

Pros:

  • Amazon Music's price per month is lower than Apple Music (for Amazon Prime subscribers)

  • Three-month free trial

  • Downloading music and offline listening on all your devices

  • App for iOS, Mac, Android, and web browser app

  • Access to unlimited music

  • Works great with Amazon Echo and Fire TV

Cons:

  • Unfriendly interface (according to many)

PROS AND CONS OF APPLE MUSIC

As probably everyone heard about Apple and its music streaming platform, we don't have much to introduce it to you. But if somehow, you've missed it going to help you with getting familiar with Apple Music… If you're an iOS user, Apple Music is usually a perfect solution for you. Like the other major streaming services, Apple Music doesn't require a subscription to use. Connecting your MacBook or iPhone with Apple Music will create a perfect ecosystem, where you'll be allowed to listen to unlimited music on all your devices. Apple Music launched in July 2015 and is now almost as popular as Spotify for example.

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Price: $5.99 for students, $10.99 regular price

Pros:

  • Works smoothly with all Apple devices and integrates like a charm

  • One month free trial

  • Over 100 million songs and exclusive content

  • Downloading music and offline listening on all your devices

  • Intuitive interface and easy navigation

  • Access to unlimited music

  • Great live radio—Apple Music 1!

Cons:

  • Apple Music is more expensive per month than Amazon Music (for Prime members); the price is the same for either Apple Music or Amazon streaming service if considering non-Prime members for Amazon

  • Mostly dedicated to Apple device users

AMAZON MUSIC VS. APPLE MUSIC—THE WINNER?

It's time for the final verdict. The winner is… Apple Music!

The experience has won. Apple services with Apple Music as the leading streaming service had enough time to develop the features for streaming music that listeners are looking for. But we must confess that Apple Music and Amazon Music can be rivals in the near future. Amazon Music takes a lesson and does its homework to become one of the biggest players amongst other music services. And just to prove our predictions, just take a look at how big Amazon has become in the last few years in the music business. Let's give Amazon Music a chance and wait for what the future brings.

If you ever wanted to share your playlist between Apple Music and Amazon Music, we're there for you 🙂

With the FreeYourMusic app, you can easily transfer music for free between these two and many more supported music platforms. So even though Amazon Music has not developed the feature of uploading your music, you can easily do it by importing your playlists with our "backup" option and having your own downloaded music and favorite tracks in your music library.

And what do you think? Which of these music platforms will gain more new subscribers around the world? Let us know in the comments down below whether you chose a new service for your music or stayed with your current one!

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