For a limited time, you can sign up for a 3-month free trial right here.For some listeners, standard streamed music is just not good enough, says Steve Boom, vice president of Amazon Music.

The best way to get Amazon Music HD right now is Amazon's Music Unlimited plan for $11.99/month (Individual) or $17.99/month (Family). Further, many of today's popular audio devices (smart speakers, headphones, AV receivers) from Denon, Marantz, Klipsch, Arcam, Bluesound and many more already support high-res formats or Amazon Music natively. You will need appropriate hardware to take full advantage of HD and Ultra HD, but most current phones easily support 16bit/44kHz and higher resolution already. The platform has also snared exclusives UHD remastered albums and offers curated HD and UHD playlists. At the time of writing, it now offers over 75 million tracks in HD and over 7 million tracks in Ultra HD. At least, that is when compared to music that artists have specifically created from scratch to take advantage of Atmos and Spatial Audio techniques - and fortunately, we're now starting to see more of those releases.īut Spatial Audio aside, what we're actually excited about is Amazon Music HD. The truth is, 'upmixed' spatial audio really isn't that great. Instead, Amazon Music's latest media hype has been all around its launch of Spatial Audio, which promises to “put the listener inside the music with an immersive, multi-dimensional audio experience.” No doubt, this announcement is in response to Apple Music's big launch back in May this year.

And finally, Ultra HD, which is better than CD quality at up to 24bit/192kHz.Īmazon Music was only available in Australia in its 'Standard' format until recently, a sticky issue for anything other than casual listening on the go or as a background filler. High Definition, technically considered 'lossless' at CD quality and 16bit/44kHz resolution. Bizarrely, Amazon has not made a big song and dance about flipping the switch on Music HD locally, in contrast to Qobuz, who launched in Australia earlier this year to much fanfare.Īmazon Music offers three streaming levels - Standard, lossy compressed files up to 320kbps resolution.

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