Amazon Music Upgrades Music Catalog To 100M: What's The Catch?

Amazon Prime members can now enjoy all 100 million songs on Amazon Music for free, without advertisements, and at no additional cost... But what's the catch?

According to reports, Amazon Music is going head to head with Apple Music by upgrading its music catalog to 100 million from its previous offering of 2 million.

"We continue to innovate on behalf of our customers, and to bring even more entertainment to Prime members, on top of the convenience and value they already enjoy," said Steve Bloom, Amazon Music's vice president.

In addition to their extensive music catalog, Prime members can also enjoy podcasts for free, including some of the Amazon exclusive shows like "Baby, this is Keke Palmer," "MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories," Suspect Vanished In The Snow," "Killer Pysche Daily with Candice DeLong," and more.

"We can't wait for members to experience not only a massively expanded catalog of songs, but also the largest selection of ad-free top podcasts anywhere, at no additional cost to their membership."

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The Catch?

The e-commerce company is definitely going to have Spotify and Apple Music run for their money with the new upgrade, however, unlike the two audio streaming companies, there's one thing that might bring listeners to pause

According to Amazon's website, Prime members can enjoy the entire catalog in shuffle mode.

Listeners reportedly cannot play any specific song on demand. Instead, they would have to click shuffle until they find the song they wish to listen to-which might be a bit of a bummer for some.

Perhaps that is just one of the ways Amazon ensures that listeners would have to go through an artist's catalog, giving them more avenues to explore new genres of music.

With that being said, listeners cannot listen to an album's track in sequence, which might be another roadblock for some, as there are fans who prefer listening to an album according to sequence or the artist might follow a specific plot or storyline with the tracklist.

Podcast

On the other hand, avid listeners of podcasts are in for a treat with Amazon's upgrade. Not only can they listen to an array of Amazon-exclusive shows, they can also enjoy the episodes without worrying about the ads.

Compared to other audio streaming platforms, Amazon also included a "podcast preview" feature that will allow listeners to sample a clip from the show. This ensures that they can find whichever podcast really works for them.

This is a notable difference from Apple and Spotify's podcast shows that all include ads in the middle of the episode, which might be distracting and annoying for some.

In addition to these new features, Amazon also have spatial audio along with songs in HD and Ultra HD, which might just be a game changer for some listeners.

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