Amazon is introducing Amazon Music HD this week, a new tier for users of the Amazon Music service. HD is a tier above what has been offered in terms of audio quality, hence the HD in the name. That always means better.
Pricing for Music HD starts at $12.99/month for new subscribers and current subscribers to Amazon Music pay $5/month plus their regular plan fee. However, for a limited time, Amazon Music subscribers in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan can upgrade to Amazon Music HD for 90 days at no additional cost.
Here’s the actual specs of Music HD.
Amazon Music HD offers customers more than 50 million lossless HD songs, with a bit depth of 16 bits and a sample rate of 44.1kHz (CD quality). In addition, customers can stream millions more songs in Ultra HD (better than CD quality), with a bit depth of 24 bits and a sample rate up to 192 kHz.
To compare, Tidal offers the same 44.1kHz rate with its HiFi tier, but it also offers the Masters tier at 96 kHz/24 bit. If you’re using Spotify, let’s just say you probably aren’t overly concerned about bit depth and sample rate, but if you’re a Premium subscriber, you’re able to access streams at approximately 320kbit/s.
According to Neil Young, who you maybe know has taken the quality of digital music extremely seriously, “Earth will be changed forever when Amazon introduces high quality streaming to the masses. This will be the biggest thing to happen in music since the introduction of digital audio 40 years ago.”
If you’re into Amazon Music, go check it out.
Amazon Music HD
// Amazon