Amazon’s HD march on music streamers
Amazon is for audiophiles. That was the surprising news on Tuesday, as the e-tailing giant unveiled a musicstreaming service that delivers higher-quality audio than what can be heard on Spotify or Apple Music.
The new streaming service, called Amazon Music HD, delivers CD-quality digital music files, just as Jay-Z’s Tidal music-streaming service does. But Amazon said its new service costs only $14.99 a month, versus $19.99 a month for Tidal.
Amazon Prime members can get the new service for $12.99 a month, the company said Tuesday.
The announcement got a plug from rock legend Neil Young, who has long lamented the poor audio quality of music-streaming services and MP3 files. In 2015, Young launched a high-res digital music player called Pono, but shut it down two years later.
“Earth will be changed forever when Amazon introduces high-quality streaming to the masses,” Young said in a press release from Amazon. “This will be the biggest thing to happen in music since the introduction of digital audio 40 years ago.”
Amazon Prime users who pony up the extra dough will have access to more than 50 million songs — slightly fewer than the 60 million available on Tidal — “in the highestquality streaming audio.”
In addition to a massive trove of CD-quality tracks, Amazon said it will also offer “millions of songs” in formats that offer more than 10 times the musical resolution of what’s found on Spotify or Apple Music.
For now, the new service is available in the US, UK, Germany and Japan.
Amazon is offering a 90-day free trial of Amazon Music HD, matching Apple Music’s three-month free trial.
Neither Spotify nor Apple — who combined have nearly 300 million subscribers — offers a lossless tier of services.