Over the weekend, it was reported that Amazon would be launching a free tier for its Amazon Music streaming service. Now, the company has officially announced the service. Starting today, users in the United States can get access to a "selection of top playlists and stations" for free through an Alexa-enabled device.
As with most free tiers for music streaming services, this experience will be supported by ads, and you also can"t just play any track you"d like. You can start playing a station based on a specific song or artist, or play a specific genre of music, for example, but you can"t choose a specific track to listen to whenever you"d like. If you want to listen to any song at any time, you"ll still need to subscribe to Amazon Music or Amazon Prime.
While the move isn"t surprising after the original announcement, it is interesting to note that the launch is happening on the same day as Google is doing almost the same exact thing with YouTube Music and Google Assistant. What"s more, the two companies also announced today that they would be making amends, bringing YouTube TV back to Fire TV devices and Prime Video to Chromecast and Android TV.
If you"d like to get started with Amazon Music"s free experience, you can simply ask Alexa things such as "play the Imagine Dragons station" or "play 80s music". If it gets your interest, you can learn more about the paid tiers here.