Today Amazon announced its new streaming service for its US Prime Customers. This is another free service that is part of the $99/year Prime membership and completes the package that including free shipping and streaming video.

Ad Free

One of the big draws to the Prime Music service is that it will be ad free. There are plenty of other music services out there that let people stream music for free but most of them insert ads between songs after a set amount of time or number of tracks. Of course you do have to pay for the Amazon Prime membership which essentially covers some costs that Amazon would receive if it placed ads into the music streams but it is still something that is a big benefit.

Curated Music Playlists

If you aren’t quite sure of an artist that you want to listen to, Amazon also provides a set of Prime Playlists that users can listen to. This isn’t really all that different from some of the radio stations that are just collections of tracks from an artist, genre or theme that can be found on other music services but it is a nice way to get listening to something quick without having to search for an available artist or song.

Offline Listening

Probably the best feature of the Prime Music service is the offline capabilities. Pretty much all of the streaming music services require that you be connected to the internet to listen. The Prime Music service will allow the downloading of music tracks through the cloud player to the device for listening when you are not connected. Now it is not clear how much music can be stored offline for listening, how long it will be accessible for or if only certain tracks are allowed to have this done. Still, it is certainly a feature that sets it apart for the rest.

Limited Library

The big problem with the Prime Music service is its limited selection of tracks to listen to. At launch, it has just one million total tracks to pick from. Sure, it has many of the big name artists but there are also a number of absent in its current form. In contrast, a number of current music services have upwards of twenty million tracks to choose from. Hopefully Amazon will be able to license more tracks for use on the Prime Music service but current Prime members certainly don’t have much to complain about as it is just another feature onto their existing service and it will likely entice some additional consumers to try it out. Hopefully this will gradually grow as Amazon negotiates to get more tracks on the service just like it has done with its Prime Instant Video.

How To Listen

If you own a Kindle HD or HDX tablet or Kindle Fire TV, you should be able to connect up to the new Prime Music service after a software update to listen to the music if you are Prime member. For non-Amazon devices, you need to get the Amazon Music app (separate from the Instant Video app) to connect into the service. If you are not a current Amazon Prime member, Amazon does offer their 30-day free trial.