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Amazon logo on a door: Music fans should pay more in the future
Photo: REUTERS / Brendan McDermid
If you want to use Amazon's Audioflatrate Music Unlimited, you will have to pay more for it in the future.
As the company announced, the price for an individual membership will rise from EUR 9.99 to EUR 10.99 per month as of today, Tuesday.
The student subscription now costs EUR 5.99 instead of EUR 4.99 per month and the family package costs EUR 16.99 instead of the previous EUR 14.99.
For Amazon customers who are already paying for a Prime subscription, the Unlimited package remains cheaper: For individual membership, they will be charged EUR 8.99 per month instead of EUR 10.99 as before.
An Amazon help page states that the prices are being updated "so that we can offer you our usual quality of service".
The US company recently increased its minimum order value for free deliveries to customers without a Prime subscription.
Music Unlimited customers should see the new prices on their next bill.
The current increase also affects the annual subscription for families, which will be 20 euros more expensive: instead of 149 euros a year, it will cost 169 euros in the future.
According to Amazon, customers who are in free periods or who have booked temporary special offers are not affected for the time being.
Only six skips per hour for Prime customers
Music Unlimited is the group's most comprehensive range of music, comparable to Spotify Premium or Apple Music.
The group also has a package called Amazon Music Prime in its portfolio, which its Prime customers can use at no extra charge.
Music Prime used to offer significantly fewer songs than Music Unlimited, but in autumn 2022 Amazon gave the offer a general overhaul.
However, that update proved to be a double-edged sword: on the one hand, subscribers who are already paying for Prime have had significantly more music available since the changeover.
At the same time, they now have significantly fewer opportunities to listen to the music from Amazon's catalog exactly as they want.
So they only have six skips per hour, i.e. the possibility to skip a running song.
In addition, with the exception of a few playlists, interesting songs can no longer be called up directly.
An example: if you go to the album »Muttersprache« by singer Sarah Connor, you can no longer listen to it in the original order.
And if you click on a specific song from the album, the app says: "We have created a random mix of the selected song and similar songs." In this mix, instead of the desired song, you often hear a different track from the album – or even a song by other artists.
If you want to be able to skip such songs as often as you like - or just listen directly to the song you clicked on - Amazon Prime customers recommend booking the Music Unlimited package.
So exactly the package that has now become more expensive.
Read more about the excitement about the Amazon Music Prime switch here.
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