Editor's Review
The catalogue is not the problem. Amazon Music carries the same tens of millions of tracks as its rivals, folds in podcasts, and offers lossless and spatial audio on the top tier. Playlists, generated stations, offline downloads, voice search through Alexa and tight handoff to Echo speakers and Fire devices are all here.
The tiers are the problem. What you can play depends on which Amazon plan you hold, and the boundaries between them move. Prime membership grants one level of access, an Unlimited subscription another, and an ad-supported free tier sits beneath both. People install this expecting full on-demand playback because they already pay for Prime, then find themselves shuffling a playlist they did not choose. That single misunderstanding drives most of the anger aimed at the app.
The 3.95 rating tells the rest. That is a poor score for something with 100M+ installs behind a company of Amazon's size, and the reviews are less about missing music than about the interface. Successive redesigns have pushed podcasts and promotional carousels ahead of the library people spent years building, and the route from opening the app to playing a saved album is longer than it should be.
If you already pay for Unlimited or listen mostly through Echo speakers, it does the job and the audio quality on the higher tiers is genuinely good. Coming from a dedicated music service, expect a busier and more commercial home screen than you are used to.
Features
On-demand streaming from a catalogue of tens of millions of tracks
Podcasts sitting alongside music in the same library
Offline downloads for listening without a connection
HD, Ultra HD and spatial audio on the higher subscription tier
Alexa voice control for search and playback
Playback handoff to Echo speakers, Fire TV and other Amazon hardware
Generated stations and personalised playlists
Time-synced lyrics on supported tracks
Pros
Lossless and spatial audio are included on the top tier rather than charged extra
Voice search through Alexa is fast and lands on the right track
Behaves as a natural default player across Amazon's own devices
Cons
Playback rights change with your Amazon plan, and the difference confuses people
Prime membership alone does not grant full on-demand listening
The home screen puts promotion and podcasts ahead of your own library
A 3.95 average is weak for an app this widely installed
Questions people ask
Does Prime include all of Amazon Music?
No. Prime provides a limited level of access. Full on-demand listening across the whole catalogue needs the separate Unlimited subscription.
Can I listen without paying anything?
Yes, through an ad-supported free tier, with restrictions on what you can select on demand.
Does offline listening work on every tier?
Downloads are a paying-subscriber feature and are not part of the free tier.
Why does it shuffle instead of playing the song I picked?
That is the lower tiers behaving as designed. Choosing individual tracks on demand is reserved for paid access.
