Amazon Prime Music review

The appeal of this music-on-demand platform is limited by its poor catalogue

Prime Music is a free part of Amazon's Prime service bundle, which includes on-demand access to a wealth of TV programming and movies (including 4K content), plus free next-day delivery on millions of Amazon purchases, cloud photo storage and a few other treats. A Prime sub is £79 a year, or less than £7 a month. It's very good value, but if you sign up, is Prime Music strong enough to have you cancelling your existing Spotify, Tidal or Apple Music sub?

What, no Civil War?

The answer, sadly, is probably not. It just doesn't have the content chops. Some absentees (AC/DC, Led Zeppelin) can be expected, but others are plain weird. An example? Guns N' Roses once launched two albums on the same label on the same day. Yet only one of these (Use Your Illusion I) is available to stream – Use Your Illusion II isn't. Similarly, US alternative group The Flaming Lips have a lengthy catalogue, yet only two albums can be found on Prime Music. I kept hitting these stumbling blocks. Other services have much greater content choice.

Away from this it has things that appeal. The desktop app and smartphone controller are good; you can import your own music (250 songs for free, more if you pay a fee); digital versions of any music purchased via Amazon over the years are freely incorporated; it's ad-free; and playlists, recommendations and offline access are all supported.

Prime subscribers should therefore check it out, but treat it very much as a bonus feature rather than a killer app until Amazon can hammer out more content licensing deals.

HCC verdict: 3/5

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