Thinking about improving the experience of existing customers and with a view to attracting new listeners, Amazon Music increased its catalog from 2 million to 100 million songs for its subscribers. Plus, it included hundreds of thousands of ad-free podcast episodes

In order to attract more customers and improve their experiences, Amazon Music, Amazon’s music streaming service, expanded its catalog from 2 million to 100 million songs.

Within the catalog, the service is also adding “hundreds of thousands” of ad-free podcast episodes, which have been one of the main requests from followers of this type of content. These include the full lineup of Wondery shows, podcasts from partners like NPR, The New York Times, CNN, ESPN, Slate and Barstool Sports, as well as exclusive shows from Amazon Music.

With the recent expansion in the song library there will be a new change: Prime members will be limited to shuffle mode, based on artist, album or playlist, where previously everything was streamed on demand.

Amazon Music Vice President Steve Boom said the license terms for shuffle vs. play-on-demand are different, though he declined to go into specifics. “This is about improving the Prime experience,” not about Amazon cutting costs,” he said.

Amazon said Prime users will be able to play songs on demand through “All Access” playlists, which are personalized according to listening preferences and can be downloaded for offline listening. In addition, they will be able to listen to songs in HD audio, as well as tracks in Ultra HD and spatial audio.

To get full access to these benefits, users will need to pay extra for the Amazon Music Unlimited tier, which currently costs $9.99 per month for non-Prime members and $8.99 per month for Prime members.

The Amazon Music app will also add a new Podcast Previews feature, which allows customers to listen to short audio snippets designed to help them quickly discover and find new podcasts.

The news comes amid some developments within Amazon, such as the premiere of Venmo as a new payment method for the Christmas shopping season and after the company held its “Amazon Prime Early Access” event for the first time.

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