We compare the features, cost and catalogue of the two streaming services to help you decide where to spend your subscription money.

Amazon actually have various tiers under their music streaming umbrella. Amazon Music Free is similar to other free streaming services, with ad-supported playback and limited features. Amazon Music Prime comes bundled with Prime memberships, with standard features such as ad-free, offline and on-demand listening, but a limited catalogue. Finally Amazon Music Unlimited, which is Amazon’s full on music streaming service.

In the US, for individuals, Spotify comes in two flavours: Spotify Free and Spotify Premium. Spotify Free is the audio company’s ad-supported music streaming model, while for a monthly subscription Spotify Premium gives listeners all the features they need.

For this comparison we’ll be looking at Amazon Music Unlimited, as this most closely competes with Spotify Premium.

Features

Both streaming services offer the same basic features such as ad-free listening, offline and on-demand playback, letting you listen to any song, anywhere, with unlimited skips.

While both streaming services offer the streaming of lossy MP3 files at up to 320 kbps, Amazon Music HD recently brought the previously $12.99/month hi-fi streaming feature to regular Amazon Music Unlimited memberships at no additional cost. Amazon Music HD gives users access to music in ultra HD, at up to 24-bit/192 kHz, as well as exclusive ultra HD remastered albums.

Spotify have also announced their own HiFi streaming tier, however we are still waiting for the feature to launch, and have no word yet on the maximum bitrate available or potential price increase above Premium memberships. With the competition for hi-fi music streaming from streaming services such as Amazon Music and Apple Music, it’s likely Spotify will drop any initial plans they had to include a price increase for the feature. Fingers crossed!

Catalogue

Spotify report over 82 million tracks are available for streaming, while Amazon Music report 90 million tracks are available. All 90 million are available in high definition on Amazon Music, which is CD-quality at 16-bit/44.1 kHz. Over 7 million tracks on Amazon Music are available in ultra HD. As for Spotify, we are unsure how large their upcoming HiFi catalogue will be.

Price

For individual memberships in the US, Spotify Premium is $9.99 per month. Amazon Music Unlimited is also $9.99 per month, but is reduced to $8.99 per month for existing Prime members.

Both services offer various discounts for families, students and bundles with other subscription services.

Conclusion

While both services are comparable, the inclusion of Amazon Music HD at no additional cost gives them the edge in features and catalogue. For existing Amazon Prime members, the discount is a nice inclusion too.

If you’re a music artist, you’re in luck. RouteNote can help you get your music onto either of these music streaming services and many more for free. Just sign up to RouteNote, upload your tracks, select the stores to distribute to and we’ll do the rest.