As a Prime member, you can get five free months of Amazon Music Unlimited during Prime Day with a one-month purchase. Amazon's ad-free streaming music service typically costs $9.99/month. For just $10, you won't have to spend another dime on streaming music in 2024.

This is one of the best Prime Day deals on Amazon services available right now, so pick it up today and enjoy unlimited streaming music while you peruse the rest of the great Prime Day deals.

Best Amazon Music Unlimited deal

What's the difference between Amazon Music and Amazon Music Unlimited?

Amazon Music has ads, limited streaming to one device, and does not offer offline playback, HD, or Spatial Audio. Unlimited offers 100 million songs in HD quality and a growing list of spatial audio tracks.

Amazon Music Unlimited lets you stream your favorite songs ad-free, anytime, anywhere. Listen to music on all your devices with the Amazon Music app or on your laptop via music.amazon.com. Or, stream from Alexa-enabled devices like the Amazon Fire Max 11 or Echo Pop.

And what's more, Amazon Music Unlimited has a fast-growing library of music mastered in Dolby Atmos and 360 Reality Audio. There are also thousands of expertly curated playlists and Stations to browse.

Amazon Prime Day is underway and runs through July 17. We're tracking all of the best deals and constantly updating our Amazon Prime Day deals hub, so check it out for all the biggest savings on products we recommend.

Announced by Amazon on Thursday, this collaboration will be one of the most affordable ways to experience console gaming without actually needing a console. With a compatible Fire TV Stick and an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you can play hundreds of cloud-enabled games, including Starfield, Fallout 4, Forza Horizon 5, and Senua's Saga: Hellblade II. 

There's no official rollout date for this support to kick off, but there is a vague "July" estimate. With Prime Day deals dominating between July 16 and 17, it would make sense to launch Xbox support around that time. There will surely be a significant discount on compatible Fire TV Sticks to inspire both new and resident gamers to try out Xbox cloud gaming on their TVs.

Here's what you'll need in order to stream Xbox games via Amazon Fire TV.

How to stream Xbox Games to Fire TV Stick

First, you'll need a compatible Fire TV Stick. According to Amazon, both the Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2023) and Fire TV Stick 4K (2023) will work. 

If you want to buy one right now, the Fire TV Stick 4K is 20% off as an early Prime Day deal. Or, you can hold out for a better deal during the official Prime Day sales between July 16 and 17.

Once you have a compatible Fire TV Stick, you must download the Xbox app to the device via Amazon's Appstore. The app won't be available until sometime in July, but you can go ahead and subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for just $1 your first month, and then $16.99/month after or take advantage of this big discount on 3-month Game Pass Ultimate gift cards bringing it down to just $10 a month.

Lastly, you'll need a compatible Bluetooth controller. Amazon says the Xbox Wireless Controller, Xbox Adaptive Controller, DualSense controller, or DualShock 4 controller will all work.

Come July, as long as you have a compatible Fire TV Stick, Bluetooth controller, and an active Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you can play cloud games on any TV, whether it's your living room TV or the TV in a hotel room on your summer vacation.

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If you haven't already, watch the new Amazon Prime Day ad/music video for It's Prime Day featuring Megan Thee Stallion. It's the Amazon summer savings anthem we never knew we needed! As confirmed Tuesday, Prime Day 2024 is on July 16-17, however, early Prime member deals start now. 

For example, your Prime membership nets you 5 free months of Amazon Music Unlimited to stream It's Prime Day by Megan Thee Stallion which drops June 28. Normally, you'd expect to pay $9.99/mo. for this music streaming service, so that's $50 in savings. 

This is one of the best Prime Day deals on Amazon services you don't have to wait for. Non-Prime members get 3 free months (valued at $33 without Prime).

Best Amazon Music Unlimited deal

What's the difference between Amazon Music and Amazon Music Unlimited?

Amazon Music has ads, limited streaming to one device, and does not offer offline playback, HD, or Spatial Audio. Unlimited offers 100 million songs in HD quality and a growing list of spatial audio tracks.

Amazon Music Unlimited lets you stream your favorite songs ad-free, anytime, anywhere. Listen to music on all your devices with the Amazon Music app or on your laptop via music.amazon.com. Or, stream from Alexa-enabled devices like the Amazon Fire Max 11 or Echo Pop.

And what's more, Amazon Music Unlimited has a fast-growing library of music mastered in Dolby Atmos and 360 Reality Audio. There are also thousands of expertly curated playlists and Stations to browse.

Block your calendars, frugal friends! Amazon Prime Day starts July 16 at 12:01 a.m. PT/ 3:01 a.m. ET and runs through July 17. Don’t want to wait? It’s never too soon to save! Visit our Amazon Prime Day deals hub for today’s early discounts. 

Currently, you can get 6 months of Paramount Plus for free (valued at $18) when you buy a 3-month Mint Mobile Unlimited Plan for just $15/mo. Normally, you'd be expected to pay $120 upfront, so now it's just $46 for 3 months. of service. If you want to lower your monthly phone bill, this is one of the best carrier offers out there. 

Today's best Mint Mobile deal

Mint Mobile is one of the many prepaid wireless carriers in the U.S. from which to choose from. According to our sister site, Tom's Guide, Mint Mobile is the best overall prepaid plan — period. In the U.S., Mint Mobile runs on T-Mobile's nationwide 5G network, so its coverage map blankets 99% of the region. 

Paramount Plus is one of the best streaming services around and has a massive selection of movies and TV shows. Paramount Plus Essentials membership bundled with this Mint Mobile deal includes thousands of TV shows and movies, NFL on CBS live, top soccer games, limited ads, and CBSN 24/7 live news.

This deal ends May 31.

Our step-by-step guide will show you how to get Paramount Plus free for 7 days to watch Knuckles, starring Idris Elba. You'll also get to enjoy other Paramount Plus originals and popular shows like the Sylvester Stallone starrer, Tulsa King as well as Halo. Lawmen: Bass Reeves, Frasier, and Special Ops: Lioness — all for free. 

Start enjoying your free Paramount Plus 7-day trial in just a few easy steps. When your trial ends, if you decide to continue the service, you'll be billed $5.99 a month for Paramount Plus Essential or $11.99 monthly for the semi-ad-free Paramount Plus with Showtime plan. For a limited time, save 10% off your monthly or optional annual service via coupon, "AARP" at checkout.

 This is one of the best trials for watching free live TV, shows and movies. New subscribers with a valid e-mail address are eligible for this offer. 

Paramount Plus free 7-day trial

Paramount Plus is worth considering if you want to switch from cable and makes a great gift for any occasion. Subscribers can watch movies, TV shows, and live TV on up to three devices. It works with Android and iOS, PlayStation, Xbox, Chromecast, Fire TV and more.

Paramount Plus offers two tiers of service plans. The base tier, Paramount Plus Essential costs $5.99/mo. or $59.99 a year ($5/mo.). This plan includes thousands of TV shows and movies, NFL on CBS live, top soccer games, limited ads, and CBSN 24/7 live news. The upper tier, Paramount Plus with Showtime is priced at $11.99/mo. or $119.99 annually ($10/mo.). You get everything in the base tier plus more live sports, no ads (except for live TV and some shows), your local CBS live channel, and download functionality.

Securing yourself a Paramount Plus 7-day free trial is a simple three-step process. First, choose your preferred plan from the Paramount Plus Pick Your Plan page. Next, enter coupon, "AARP" in the "Have a coupon code?" drop-down menu on the Payment Method page. You should see the 10% discount applied. Enter your first and last name, billing address, and credit card or PayPal payment information. 

You will not be charged if you cancel your plan before your trial ends. If you decide to keep Paramount Plus, you will be automatically billed after your trial ends. You may cancel your Paramount Plus plan at any time, so there's no risk. 

So if you want to ditch your cable company for a streaming service, try Paramount Plus for free. 

Netflix revealed these plans in its Q4 2023 earnings report, where the company claimed "we’re looking to retire our Basic plan in some of our ads countries, starting with Canada and the UK in Q2 and taking it from there."

Its "ad countries" currently include Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, the UK and the US. If you're in one of these countries, while we don't have an exact date yet, these same plan changes are likely in your near future.

This comes after a year of the company gradually phasing its ad-free Basic tier out. In June 2023, Netflix removed the option for new Canadian subscribers, and a couple of months later, this change moved to US and UK subscribers too.

The company also increased the price of its Basic plan from $9.99 to $11.99 last October in the US and UK, so there were quite a few signs of Netflix's displeasure with it.

Now, it's set to be phased out for UK/Canada subscribers from June 4 onwards. Users on the plan will be automatically forced onto Standard with ads as explained in the email. If you don't want ads, you will have to upgrade to the £10.99 Standard subscription tier ($15.49 in the US).

To some, it's no surprise that Netflix is making these changes to support its growing enterprise. Others feel burnt by the repeated price increases and massive changes in services, but when did this all start?

Why Netflix subscribers feel burnt

While Netflix started as a DVD rental service, its popularity skyrocketed when it adopted streaming, featuring a wide selection of content licensed from the biggest channels and film production companies in the world. 

Now that streaming has notoriously become a free-for-all, with virtually every media company building its own service to deliver content, Netflix has had to rely on its own original productions. Netflix originals require tons of money, with Forbes reporting that both parts of Rebel Moon cost around $166 million.

As Netflix put it in its Q4 2023 earnings report, it will "occasionally ask our members to pay a little extra" as they "invest in and improve Netflix." As a result, Netflix significantly increased subscription costs in January 2022, with its Basic tier going from $8.99 to $9.99, Standard tier upping from $13.99 to $15.49, and the Premium tier increasing from $17.99 to $19.99. 

In Netflix's 2022 Q1 earnings report, the company lost 200,000 subscribers compared to Q4 2021, with expectations that it would get worse, predicting a loss of 2 million subscribers by Q2 2022 compared to Q2 2021's 1.5 million subscriber gain. The company acknowledged that this was "largely a result of our price change," but still suggests that it was "in-line with our expectations and is significantly revenue positive."

It's believed that this is why the most affordable Standard with ads tier for $6.99 launched, as it gives users a more affordable way to enjoy Netflix's content without having to spend more than $10. It also gives Netflix another revenue stream from those customers, which depending on their watching habits more than accounts for the price gap between their subscription and the ad-free plan.

But for subscribers who've been a part of Netflix since the beginning, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by its price. Netflix streaming began in 2011 at $7.99 for its Standard tier, and even when new tiers were introduced, Basic ($7.99), Standard ($8.99), and Premium ($11.99), they all remained relatively low-cost. Comparatively, Standard now costs $15.49 and Premium is $22.99. 

Now that Basic is being phased out altogether, effectively removing many subscriber's last bastion of ad-free affordability on the service, Netflix may face a similar situation as it did in 2022. Price changes and removal lost services could translate into lost subscribers.

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Streaming devices come in handy when you want to cut the cable cord or access all of your streaming services from one place. Today's best streaming devices make it easy to find and watch or listen to your favorite content. These portable media players put thousands of TV shows, movies, and live TV channels at your fingertips. They also convert older model "dumb" televisions into modern smart TVs and customize our viewing experience.  

So If you want to complement your existing smart TV or add smart functionality to your dated TV set, now is one of the best times to save. From Apple TV to the first kid-friendly HDMI stick, here are the best streaming device deals you can get right now.

Quick links

• Amazon: streaming device deals from $19 
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Best steaming device deals

In a recent interview with CNBC, Disney CEO Bob Iger outlined plans to turn the streaming service "not just into a profitable business, [but] into a growth business," partly by preventing multiple households from sharing one Disney Plus account (via The Verge). 

Get ready to say goodbye to the luxury of sharing your password as early as June —or make plans to binge your watchlist before canceling your account.

This new restrictive Disney Plus policy affects "a few countries" — more to come

Similar to Netflix, Disney Plus graciously plans to let multiple households stay on the same plan for an "additional fee." These paid sharing plans will start rolling out in June in "just a few countries in a few markets," but it's not clear which countries this ominous paid sharing test will hit first.

Regardless, by September, the Disney Plus password-sharing crackdown will be effective in all countries. Disney CFO Hugh Johnston confirmed during the company's February earnings call that this summer, subscribers "suspected of improper sharing" will be prompted to sign up for their own subscription or pay an "additional fee," which is unknown right now.

Disney Plus is the second-most popular streaming service, behind Netflix, and it has a lot of acquired content under its belt. But will that be enough to get current multi-household subscribers to pay for their own accounts? Bob Iger seems to think so.

When asked about the competition, Iger said "We know what you need to be successful in streaming and not everybody has that, and I’m not sure everybody can get it. We know that we can, given everything that I’ve discussed…the content that we have and the technology that we’re building and the brands that we have. I don’t think everybody does though."

In short, Disney Plus is coming for Netflix and the competition — and also for your wallet — all in the name of becoming "a business that has margins that [Disney] and [its] shareholders would really be proud of."

Or subscribe to Max Ad-free for $110.99/year ($9.36/mo.) to get no-ads, stream 1080p content on up to 2 devices at a time, and up to 30 downloads to watch Max on the go. Alternatively, Max Ultimate Ad-free for $139.99 ($11/67/mo.) supports 4K video quality on up to 4 devices at once, Dolby Atmos, and affords you up to 100 downloads.

Today's best Max steaming deal

Beyond the best seats in the house for the 2024 NCAA Tournament games, Max offers a massive library of streaming content. Get access to fan-favorite franchises like DC Universe to watch The Penguin starring Colin Farrell and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter 8-film collection. Plus, enjoy blockbuster movies, original TV series, and genre-specific programming from true crime to reality TV, to comedy and others.

Apple made in-app subscriptions possible in 2010, but Netflix initially didn't want to pay a 30% cut to Apple, so the company held out on adding in-app subscriptions until 2015. You could only subscribe in the app via iTunes until late 2018, when Netflix changed its mind and revoked in-app subscriptions. If you were one of the lucky few to subscribe between 2015 and 2018, the subscription amount was grandfathered in—until now.

While ending legacy subscriptions is something most people probably saw coming, it's odd that Netflix didn't seem to give much warning. Plus, this decision is rolling out amid recent rumors of Netflix raising prices yet again in 2024 (via Variety).

Is Netflix doing too much?

The password-sharing crackdown from Netflix means that anyone who wants to watch content on Netflix has to pay for their own household account. Removing legacy subscription options forces users to either pay more for their existing plan or downgrade to an ad-ridden tier (that usually earns a company more money than paid tiers).

Now, Netflix plans to "resume [their] sort of standard approach toward price increases" in 2024, according to Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters. On the company's Q4 2023 earnings call, he also said that the price changes went "better than we forecasted" in the United States, United Kingdom, and France.

Despite price increases and restricted password sharing, Netflix continues to gain new subscribers and grow in total revenue. In 2023, Netflix gained 29.5 million net new subscribers, and UBS analysts predict Netflix might add 20 million new subscribers in 2024.

UBS analysts also estimate that with a price hike, increased revenue from ads, and new subscribers, the company's total revenue growth in 2024 will be about 15%, compared to only 7% growth in 2023.

Netflix has definitely lost plenty of subscribers in the past year or two following its password-sharing restrictions and price hikes. But with the projected growth estimated by UBS analysts, are these decisions anywhere close to being the downfall of Netflix? With so much free content available, are Netflix original movies and TV shows worth a $5 monthly price hike, or $10 or $20?

The estimated growth of Netflix provided by UBS analysts is, of course, only predictions, but they're predictions based on historical data. Only time will tell if Netflix is flying too close to the sun with another price hike.