What you need to know
- Amazon Music HD is now available in Canada.
- The service will start at $12.99 a month for an individual account; or $5 more per month for existing customers.
- Amazon is offering Canadians a free trial of the service for 90-days.
Amazon announced today that its premium, high definition music service known as Amazon Music Unlimited HD, is now available in Canada after being offered to U.S. customers for the past year. The service will be available to new subscribers starting at $12.99/month, while existing subscribers can upgrade their existing Amazon Music Unlimited service to HD for $5/month. To sweeten the pot, Amazon is giving Canadian subscribers the HD music service for free for 90 days, and this particular deal is available to new sign-ups as well.
Amazon Music HD features millions of songs at HD quality (16-bit, 44.akHz), and over one million songs at what Amazon calls Ultra HD quality (24-bit, 192kHz) — by far the highest quality available from cloud streaming services. In addition to the U.S. and Canada, the HD service is now available in the U.K., Germany, Austria, Japan, France, Italy, and Spain. There is no word currently on future expansion plans.
Amazon has some of the most extensive music subscription plans in the industry. It currently has free, ad-supported tiers, freemium music for Prime members, and premium content through its Amazon Music Unlimited subscription services (which are further broken down into individual, family, and HD options. If you are confused about which Amazon Music service or plan is right for you, don't worry — we've got you covered!
Premium music sounds best on premium headphones and speakers. Customers who opt-in may want to pick up a good pair of wireless headphones or a top-end speaker like the Amazon Echo Studio to enjoy the full HD music experience. If you want to play Amazon Music Unlimited HD on other manufacturer's products, Amazon recommends speakers from Polk Audio, Definitive Technology, Sonos, Sennheiser, and several others.
Better with Prime
Amazon's paid Music Unlimited service starts at just $8 for Prime members and is as low as $12.99 for the newly available HD tier.
