Amazon HD Music goes live

I think it's 90 days free HD if ... you already subscribe to unlimited. Or, as someone has suggested, if you have not taken advantage of any Music Unlimited trial offers previously.

I clicked through the "90 DAYS FREE!" link, and what I get is a discount offer as follows:

Individual HD: $7.99/mo for 90 days. $12.99 thereafter.
Individual Annual HD: $79/year for 30 days. $129/year thereafter. (Which, I don't even know how that even works...)

I do not subscribe to unlimited, but I previously enjoyed a 90-day trial of Unlimited (no HD) for purchasing a single exclusive MP3 off their store.

 

Reading, it does say youll need iOS of 11 or more. I realize most have that. Just putting it out there.

 

I just signed up for the trial. When I click on the cast button in the Amazon Music app on my iPhone my bluesound node 2i doesn’t show up. It’s there under Airplay devices, but I’m not sure if that’s the same thing as, like, their version of something like Spotify Connect?

When I go through the bluesound app and add Amazon Music as a service I can search for stuff through there and it plays in Hi Res, it’s kind clunky though. I can’t tell is something is Hi Res until I start playing it and see the little HR icon.

It seems like I’m missing something here, maybe not though.

 

I'm going to have to think about this one.

And I agree....Tidal might be in big trouble here.

 

One of the articles mentioned Amazon was dynamically altering the sound quality depending on the connection. Sounds like that Orastream thing the Neil Young archives is supposed to be built with. Not good or welcome in my opinion. Bit perfect is essential.

 

Agreed - if you are going through the effort of streaming lossless and high-res, leave it alone!

 

Anyone have any advice or settings info for going bit-perfect out of the Windows app?

 

Exactly!

 

Yeah I think the UI for Quobuz is much easier to follow, at least at first try.

I signed up for the free trial, and want to listen through the phone on the amazon Music app. There are “Ultra HD” playlists, but beyond that it’s tough to find out if tracks are hi-res or not. And for tracks that are “Ultra HD”...I can’t tell if they are streaming in 24-96 or 24-192 or what. Maybe that’s only in the desktop and not through the app?

 

Tons of gray market albums in their catalog.

 

Go in the settings and force it to use HD/Ultra only for streaming to see if that works.

 

Like?

 

I'm intrigued. But think I'm going to wait a bit and see how things shake out. And what user experiences are. I'm also going to follow what and how much truly Hi-Rez (24/96 or better) material there is available.

 

Interesting. About 6 months ago I sent a suggestion to Bezos and he forwarded to product development, I got an email from them. I'm a huge Echo Show fan and I asked why they couldn't just enable the USB out or add an s/pdif to act as a front end jukebox for everyone's stereo....will be interesting to see where they go with the hardware.

 

Dang I wish this was available in my country!

 

It doesn’t say if I can use my Apple TV to stream via amazon music app. I can do it through Comcast, but I’d rather utilize Apple TV.

 

Create a new Amazon account. Boom, good to go. 90 day trial.

 

Without Prime?

 

Imagine an Echo Show, displaying the album cover, outputting 24/192 over optical to the stereo, with an IR port and built in Alexa Controlled commands for everything. I know what I want for Christmas.

 

There’s another thread in gear about this.

 

That's what I did and got the 3 month trial. I'm US-based. You?

 

I'll be excited when they start offering FLAC for sale.

 

How come NONE of these streaming services have a search function so you can see exactly which artists and titles are available in HD BEFORE you sign up?

 

Yup. I'll give that a try.