Many customers are discovering the hard way that Amazon has changed its options for streaming music.
The Wall Street Journal reports customers of Amazon Prime, its broad perk service, no longer can play on demand most of the songs in the company’s catalog. That feature is now limited to customers who will pay more for an “Unlimited” music tier.
Amazon said the change is part of a major upgrade to its music services. The number of songs in its catalog for Prime members jumped from two million to 100 million, but the Prime tier has become more like a radio station: You can call in a request, after which the algorithm spits out an assortment of “similar artists.”
Amazon appears to be trying to push its music streamers to the higher-cost Unlimited tier. When users click on a song they no longer can listen to on demand in the Prime tier, an ad for its Unlimited service pops up.
Mike McKenna, 59, was blindsided by the change. Mr. McKenna, who lives near Albany, N.Y., spent years curating Amazon Music playlists. When he headed to work, he would select his car list—Kenny Chesney, Jason Aldean and other country songs.
Recently, the app began playing a rock song he had never heard. When he got to the office, he tried to click on a Kenny Chesney song in his playlist, but it didn’t work. Songs he didn’t recognize kept playingc
He googled the change over and over, then tried it again. Still no luck. “It finally hit me,” he said. He stopped using the service.
Amazon Music has been the fastest-growing competitor to Spotify and Apple Music. But its share of the music subscription market decreased from 21% in January 2022 to 17% in November, the month that Amazon introduced the updates, according to data tracker Antenna.
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