That's interesting because I'm an alternative fan who listens to indie bands as I discover them and I actually have found some great music because of Amazon's curated playlists. Even things like "Introducing Alternative" has led me to some great stuff that you don't hear on the radio or see on the charts. And, "Introducing Indie" is even better for that as well as other playlists.
And when I discover bands, I've rarely found an album that didn't have all the tracks except for albums that aren't out yet, of course.
Guess what I like about it too is that they switch out songs on their curated playlists weekly where on Spotify, it feels like it may be a month sometimes.
I don't know. It may not have everything but I enjoy it simply due to the discovery aspect and having way more curated playlists. The people doing the curating also seem to know what they're doing.
They had a 100 track playlist for Coachella for instance.
Also has all the popular stuff. Have yet to search for an artist I like and not find their music. Even the indie bands I like.
Are you sure you aren't looking at Prime Music? That obviously is missing lots of tracks.
Yes, I'm sure. I was a Music Unlimited member for like 3 months when they had a "$20 free membership" promo around Black Friday, and, like I said, I'm a musician and even had one of my label's distributors looking into the issue, and they couldn't get an answer.
I guess it really depends on what you're into. I mean, those curated "indie" tracks you're listening to are probably from the bigger indie labels that have major label support or bigger distribution deals (and that probably throw money at Amazon for the promo), not stuff from the tons of smaller labels that are out there...like, say, a niche label in North Carolina that's been around for a few decades and put out 200 or 300 releases.
Like I said, my releases and a ton of others are only available partially on Amazon Music Unlimited, but they're available in full on Spotify, Google Play Unlimited, Apple Music, Tidal, and hundreds of other streaming services and stores, including pretty much every other major streaming service out there. They're available for sale in full on Amazon, but only partially for streaming on Music Unlimited. No idea why, but that's the situation.
Edit: Also, there are a number of great bands I actually found through Spotify's discover/recommendations section that aren't on Amazon Music Unlimited at all. Amazon Music Unlimited definitely seems to have the smallest catalog of the streaming services I've tried (to the extent that I pretty much gave up on it during my trial and just continued to pay for Spotify).