Amazon Music Unlimited is Getting a Price Hike in the US and UK

Amazon is raising the price of its Amazon Music Unlimited subscription in the US and the UK next month. According to the updated customer service pages spotted by Billboard, the price of the monthly subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited will go up from $9.99 to $10.99 in the US, and from £9.99 to £10.99 in the UK.

The monthly price for subscribers to the student plan in both countries will also go up by a dollar to $5.99 and £5.99, respectively. As of this writing, Amazon didn’t give an explanation for the upcoming price hike. Back in May 2022, Amazon had already raised the price of its Amazon Music Unlimited subscription for Prime subscribers from $7.99 to $8.99 per month, or from $79 to $89 for the annual plan.

Amazon Music Unlimited currently provides ad-free and on-demand access to a catalog of 100 million songs and podcasts. Just like Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited is betting on spatial audio to attract subscribers, with some songs in the catalog being available in Dolby Atmos or Sony’s 360 Reality Audio technology.

Amazon Music Unlimited now costs the same as Apple Music, as Apple also raised the price of its individual plan from $9.99/month to $10.99/month last fall. The Apple Music Family plan also got a $2 price increase to $16.99. It will be interesting to see if Spotify will follow suit in the coming months.

Amazon Music may not get the same level of attention as other music streaming services, but it’s actually quite competitive. There’s a free tier that’s quite similar to Spotify Free, and there’s also an ad-free tier included with an Amazon Prime subscription. Until last year, Amazon Music Prime used to provide on-demand access to a catalog of 2 million songs. Amazon has since expanded that library to 100 million songs, though music playback is now restricted to shuffle mode only, a change that many users saw as a regression.