‘Greedy move’: Amazon faces severe backlash over degrading Prime subscription with forced ads, removed song downloads

Amazon Prime users are not happy as the e-commerce giant will soon be bringing ads to its popular music service while removing the option to download songs completely. The move comes around a year after Amazon first began bringing ads to Prime Video and asked existing Prime customers to instead pay for an additional subscription in order to continue viewing their favourite shows and movies without advertisements.

The company is following a similar playbook with Amazon Music by sending existing Prime subscribers an email stating that their Prime Music experience will start to include ads and won’t support offline downloads from 2 July next month.

“Starting July 2, 2026, your Amazon Prime Music benefit will include ads and no longer support downloads. You’ll still have access to 100+ million songs and 15+ million podcasts, on demand. To continue listening ad-free and offline with HD and Spatial Audio, try Amazon Music Unlimited,” read an email sent by the company to its Prime customers.

Notably, an Amazon Prime subscription costs ₹1,499 for the yearly plan and until now included the ad-free music streaming and download experience as well. However, Amazon has now launched another plan called Amazon Music Unlimited, which comes with support for ‘high-quality and spatial audio, ad-free listening and offline downloads’, and costs Prime members an additional ₹99/month if they wish to get the ad-free experience.

Meanwhile, non-Prime members will have to shell out ₹119/month to get just the Amazon Music Unlimited subscription. Amazon also says it is planning to launch a new ‘Amazon Music Free’ tier, which will make the music streaming app available to non-Prime customers while including ads.

It’s not immediately clear what the difference between the Free tier and the ‘Amazon Music for Prime members’ tier will be.

Netizens react to Amazon bringing ads to Prime Music:

Naturally, Amazon’s latest move hasn’t sat well with netizens, who have started threatening to cancel their Prime subscriptions because of the removal of ad-free music streaming.

“They’ve deliberately degraded a paid feature to squeeze more money out of you. This is the same playbook Amazon used with Prime Video. Remember when that launched with no ads? Then suddenly you’re watching ads mid-episode unless you pay an extra fee on top of your existing subscription,” wrote a user on Reddit.

“Amazing how every downgrade is marketed as a benefit these days. Prime members paid for a service that included ad-free music and offline listening, and now those features are being stripped out and sold back through a more expensive subscription. Corporate greed disguised as a product update,” wrote another user.

“This was pathetic, first they added ads to Prime Video and now music. My annual subscription was renewed last month and suddenly I saw this pop-up and the email this morning. I straight up called Amazon Customer Service and asked them to cancel my Prime membership and refund the money and they did,” another user noted.

“What’s next? Probably Audible will also get these ads. Such a greedy move. Amazon Music has the worst user interface, takes ages to go and find your favourites if you ever want to play them again. I will definitely not continue. Better to switch to YouTube Premium and get YouTube Music,” yet another user added.