Amazon Music extends free trial to three months in Australia

New Australian subscribers to Amazon’s on-demand music service, Amazon Music Unlimited, will have their month-long free trial extended to three months.

The limited offer ends on March 29.

In early February, TMN reported that Apple Music had quietly slashed its trial in Australia down to one month from three months.

Amazon Music Unlimited’s monthly local subscription is $11.99 a month for an individual, $17.99 for a six-member family plan and $4.99 for a single Echo device.

Unlike Amazon Music Prime, which for $6.99 offers 22 million music tracks as part of an Amazon Prime subscription, Music Unlimited offers 90 million with high definition options such as Dolby Atmos and 360 Reality Audio which works like a surround sound system.

It also offers personalised streaming stations, Alexa integration, unlimited skips, millions of podcasts and offline playback.

It’s not surprising that Amazon has extended its free trial in Australia.

Kantar revealed that of the 1.1 million households which took on a new music subscription in the three months to June 2021, Amazon was in second place.

It was chosen by one in five households, and with over 60% paying for it.

It’s still behind Spotify, which led the surge with 26% of newcomers.

But it’s ahead of Apple, which has a newcomer share of 13.6%.

Free trials are responsible for 22% of new music subscribers, while 14% attribute the action to buying a wireless speaker.

For both Spotify and Amazon Music Unlimited new subscribers in Australia, a wide choice of music is a major attraction.

But there is a difference between the two streaming services, Kantar pointed out.

With Spotify, 53% of new entrants were Gateway Subscribers, coming in due to a free trial, recommendations by friends and family, variety of new releases/ artists and audio quality.

Over half of Amazon Music Unlimited new payers are Stacked Subscribers – those who already have a paid Amazon service and add more to the bundle.

These users have been enticed by heavy advertising by Amazon or by online reviews, “value for money” and the all-important choice of podcasts.

Amazon Music podcasts were introduced in Australia in mid-2021.

At that time, the company’s State of Podcast report found that 50% of Australian podcast listeners preferred local podcasts, mostly for sports 63%), business/technology (59%), health and lifestyle (58%) and news/politics (56%).

But when it came to music, pop culture and society, Aussies preferred international content.

In the US, Amazon Music passed Pandora as second most popular music app by total listeners.

New data from Insider Intelligence said nearly 53 million people will listen to Amazon Music at least once a month in 2022, compared with 49 million to Pandora.

It will be interesting to see if streamers follow Neil Young’s recently advice to switch to Amazon Music after his bust up with Spotify, whose sound he described as “shitty, degraded and neutered”.

“Amazon has been leading the pack in bringing Hi-Res audio to the masses, and it’s a great place to enjoy my entire catalogue in the highest quality available,” Young stated on his website.