I compared Amazon Music to Apple Music and Spotify and learned 5 things

• It needs more of what makes it good
• Amazon Music’s lack of compatibility
• The tier subscription system is way too complex
• The desktop app is incredibly clunky
• Podcast recommendations are all over

Remember how amazing it was to have an iPod or a Zune for the first time? Okay, most people probably went the iPod route and not the Zune route, looking at the sales history. But being able to carry more than just a CD or cassette tape’s worth of songs with you when you were out and about was a total game changer. Fast-forward to the streaming era, and it only makes sense to be able to stream your favorite music from your devices without much issue.

There are a ton of ways to get audio on your phones. There are countless streaming services, podcast apps, subscription-based platforms, and more to help you listen to songs, audiobooks, podcasts, and whatever else you want to hear. The big names in the game are Spotify and Apple Music, as many fans across the globe turn these on every day to escape. They have brilliant integrations across devices to make listening to your audio simpler.

There’s another audio service that so many people have that is rarely spoken about. It’s actually surprising, given how many people have access to it, that it’s not widely discussed. Amazon Music does give a lot to users who want to use it. But it also falters in plenty of areas. Here’s what it needs to do to better position itself as a serious threat to the other two.

It needs more of what makes it good

Give us more spatial audio

For starters, you probably want to focus on what Amazon Music does well. It offers lossless and spatial audio for those who pay for an Amazon Music Unlimited subscription. That is something that a lot of people will pay for. It’s one of the main selling points of Apple Music. Spotify recently added lossless audio to its portfolio, although it pales in comparison to the quality offered by Apple Music.

Amazon Music offers “a growing catalog of Spatial Audio mastered in Dolby Atmos and 360 Reality Audio” according to its website. That’s great and all. But the amount of songs like this aren’t as large as Apple Music. If it’s able to boost this technology, it’ll be a bigger pull. Amazon Music is also terrific with its integration with Amazon devices. I have multiple Amazon Echo speakers, and they all work great with Amazon Music. But one of Amazon Music’s downfalls is the opposite of this.

Amazon Music’s lack of compatibility

You’ll struggle with some devices

Unless I specify for music to play from a certain streaming service on my Echo Show speakers, it defaults to playing the song from Amazon Music. This works for the most part, but since I don’t have an Amazon Music Unlimited subscription, I can’t do everything I want to do. But the bigger issue is when you try and use Amazon Music on devices that don’t have Alexa. It can buffer or not understand the request as well.

Amazon Music is made to have a fast integration with Alexa-supported devices. Plenty of devices that aren’t Amazon devices support Alexa, so it may not be the biggest issue in the world for you. But you might run into this if you are using a third-party speaker and trying to use voice commands. Using Amazon Music via Bluetooth isn’t really an issue in this instance.

The tier subscription system is way too complex

Why are there four?

If you have Spotify, you have the option to choose between a free plan or a Premium plan. Inside the Premium plan, it’s broken down into how many members are on the account. But at its core, there are two options. For Amazon Music, there are four legitimately different options to choose from. If you have Amazon Prime, you already have Amazon Music Prime. That subscription gets you ad-free music where you can shuffle artists but not play an unlimited amount of specific songs in a row. You also aren’t able to skip more than a few songs per hour.

If you’re happy with your free version or the one you get with Prime, Amazon isn’t happy about it, apparently.

You can also get a free Amazon Music subscription, which includes ads and also has shuffle play. If you want to pay for Amazon Music Standard, that is a step above Amazon Music Prime. Standard gets you the ability to download songs to listen offline, some Spatial Audio, SD, HD, and Ultra HD channels, and unlimited skips. Amazon Music Unlimited gets you even more songs in lossless audio, everything offered in Standard but also access to audiobooks. It’s all very confusing when you are trying to figure out which plan is best for you.

The desktop app is incredibly clunky

It’s not user-friendly at all

Not everybody uses their streaming platforms only on their phones or speakers. Plenty of people use the Apple Music and Spotify desktop apps. There isn’t even a desktop app for Amazon Music. You have to do it through a browser because the previous version of it was deemed lacking. When you do open up the browser, it comes up as Amazon Music Unlimited, and it begs you to upgrade to Unlimited at every turn. If you’re happy with your free version or the one you get with Prime, Amazon isn’t happy about it, apparently.

It’s hard to make playlists in the browser version. The large icons for all the playlists and albums is a bit overwhelming. Apple Music has put a lot of effort into iOS 26 and macOS 26 to revamp its design and make it more user-friendly. That hasn’t happened for Amazon Music, as it just feels overwhelming, in a bad way. There are almost too many genre options that pop up when you click on the Search bar. It’s just a bit of a mess.

Podcast recommendations are all over

It should just be simpler

Want to listen to podcasts? Amazon Music has a ton of them. It claims it has the most “ad-free top podcasts.” So where should you start? How about being bombarded with suggestions based on a few questions. Yes, the service is trying to get the algorithm in place to know what to suggest for you. But it asks you a lot of questions and asks you to pick podcasts you might be interested in.

But what if you haven’t listened to many podcasts before? How would you know if you’re a fan of Pardon My Take or Raising Good Humans? You wouldn’t, which is why it’s a tough question to answer. I tried the podcasts on Amazon Music, and they’re fine. But I struggled to discover new ones because I didn’t have a ton of knowledge initially about the best ones in certain genres I put into the app when they asked for topics I’m interested in. Plus, some of the podcasts I love, like The Big Picture, aren’t available on the app while they were available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. There are podcasts that are exclusive to Amazon Music, so it does work both ways. But I just want more from Amazon Music across the board on all of its features and content.