Customers now paying $99 a year for Amazon Prime will get a little more for their money starting today with the introduction of Prime Music – a new service letting customers stream or download music without limits or advertising.

The service, available now on Amazon’s website, features more than one million tracks across tens of thousands of albums as well as hundreds of specially created Prime Playlists based on your mood, preferred music genre, artist or activity. Users can create their own playlists, get recommendations from the service and other members, and download music to almost any portable device.

“We want to go where our customers are going,” said Amazon’s vice president for digital music Steve Boom. “Ultimately we’re creating lifelong relationships with our customers that makes them better customers of Amazon (who) use our services more frequently.”

That includes buying music. Although Prime Music is likely to whet the appetite of Amazon Prime members, it is unlikely to pose any threat to competitors like Pandora, Amazon Play Music, Spotify, and Apple. Although more than one million songs sounds like a lot, Amazon’s music store has 25 million tunes available for download or purchase and Spotify customers can select from more than 20 million songs.

In a brief sampling of the service, we found the experience similar to using Amazon’s Prime Instant Video — there were many more titles available only to buy than there were those accessible for free. To avoid frustration, search only from within the Prime Music section. If you search more generally, you will quickly discover Prime Music offers a lot less than you hoped.

Prime Music also has other restrictions:

• Amazon lacks a deal with music industry giant Universal Music. That leaves out a lot of popular artists;
• Amazon Prime Music embargoes the newest releases for an undisclosed waiting period (earlier speculation suggested six months after release) to prevent the free side of the music business from cannibalizing Amazon’s paid music offerings;
• A number of independent labels, where a great deal of artist creativity trumps mainstream music, are woefully underrepresented;
• Integration with Amazon’s music app needs work.

Prime members in the U.S. can start listening to Prime Music today at www.primemusic.com. Kindle Fire HD/HDX devices will get Prime Music in an automatic, over-the-air update. You can also download the latest Amazon Music app in the Android and iOS appstores.

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CNBC explores what Amazon Prime Music is all about. Is it a Spotify killer or just a music service for those who enjoy songs from the 90’s? (1:58)