Amazon Music (Prime) - both the Android app and the website

[mikeymikec]

Both interfaces seem to be designed around the principle of trying to stop you you playing the music you want. The website now tries its damnedest not to give a play option (my wife found it by clicking on a search result for a track in an album, rather than getting the album track listing on the screen and attempting to play from there), whereas the app wants to play tracks that share that album's name but aren't from that album, despite asking it to play that album.

I realise that Amazon Prime Music isn't really a money spinner in itself, just a free service (well, part of Amazon Prime) that they hope to be a gateway drug to Amazon Music Unlimited, I just don't understand why they would make it dysfunctional to an unusable extent. It's like hoping that dog shit will be a gateway drug to cocaine.

- edit - picking 'First Aid Kit - Palomino' as an example - I wanted to listen to the album a few times to see if I wanted to buy it - I've discovered on the website that if you get the album track listing up on Amazon Music, some tracks can be directly played, some not. But the ones that can't be played from there can be played directly from the search results when you search for the album. It's super weird.

I'm sure the website used to work better than this, I definitely decided to buy an album in the last year after listening to it a few times on Amazon Music. And in case anyone asks the question my wife just asked, "why don't you listen to it on YouTube?", I thought that a particular track's audio quality was getting minced a bit by YouTube, so I thought I'd try Amazon.

 

[sdifox]

I gave up on it long ago.

 

[Captante]

There's a reason I pay $10 a month for YT music when Amazon (AND Apple at the moment) music is available to me "free".

Even stuff I bought FROM Amazon is a PITA to actually listen to using their service while YT works flawlessly and effortlessly playing pretty much anything. (even the free ad-supported version of YT music smokes Amazon)

I'm also in the midst of a free 6-month special trial of Apple music. It has BY FAR the best sound quality of the three services but the interface is somewhat lacking in user-friendliness compared to YT. It's WAY better than garbage Amazon though.... at least the search actually works!

 

[JeepinEd]

I recently started using Amazon Music and agree that it sucks. For some reason, when I choose a play list, it'll only let me skip to the next song a limited amount of times. After that, I'm forced to listen to the rest of the play list without being able to skip songs I don't like.

 

[Muadib]

I recently started using Amazon Music and agree that it sucks. For some reason, when I choose a play list, it'll only let me skip to the next song a limited amount of times. After that, I'm forced to listen to the rest of the play list without being able to skip songs I don't like.

Are you on a paying tier, or Prime?

 

[nakedfrog]

I only use it for music I've already bought or for ones where the entire album is available... but I agree it's much worse than a music playing app should be in the year 2022.

 

[lxskllr]

If something isn't on bandcamp, it probably doesn't exist for me. If I like something, I buy it from bandcamp, download a flac, then transcode it to q8 vorbis. I can then listen to it anywhere/time I want on my computer or phone using an inferface I like(vanilla on phone, deadbeef on the computer).

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

What is included with Prime is limited, not the full catalog. I found a number of albums that only let you listen to 3 or 4 tracks.

You can only get the full catalog with Amazon Music, which is separate from Prime.

 

[Stiff Clamp]

For me, as a free account holder, whenever I find an album of interest and click, it now opens up Amazon Music interface - to tease me. I see the track listing and the play buttons, so I try to play a track, but instead I get an alert saying "Play on Demand is not available to non-members!" (may not be verbatim). Whereupon Amazon loads up some "similar" song from another artist, not sure of the logic behind the selection. And there I am, listening to music I never chose to.

So I shrug, and click the Purchase Type button and select "MP3" from the drop-down list. Then it takes me to the normal MP3 download page we've known for years - and I can finally sample tracks or buy them.

Yeah I'm not looking to stream music, paying someone in perpetuity for access to their library.

 

[JeepinEd]

Are you on a paying tier, or Prime?

Just Prime. I thought I'd give it a shot prior to signing up for their "Unlimited" version.

 

[bba-tcg]

There's been some changes: https://9to5toys.com/2022/11/01/amazon-music-free-prime-members/

 

[sdifox]

There's been some changes: https://9to5toys.com/2022/11/01/amazon-music-free-prime-members/

Didn't make one iota of difference. Still sucks.

 

[snoopy7548]

Yeah, it sucks (even more) now. Although the library was limited for the free users, you could play any song/album/artist you wanted as much as you wanted, and skip/rewind as many songs as you want.

They opened up the entire library to free users, but totally gimped everything else, so it's a net loss in my book. You can only skip 6 songs per hour, you can't play individual songs, and you can't play music by individual artists.

 

[bba-tcg]

Didn't make one iota of difference. Still sucks.

Indeed. The article explains that it was intentional on Amazon's part.

 

[sdifox]

Why build a service people won't use?

 

[mikeymikec]

My impression is that they're trying to beat Spotify by trying to replicate it?

 

[Muadib]

I had Amazon music unlimited for 6 months free, but didn't keep it because it didn't support Roon. These changes to Prime make no sense.

 

[pete6032]

I'm not a fan of Amazon Music, but that is the service I pay for. I posted a poll a while ago and it seems nobody here pays for a music streaming service. https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/what-streaming-music-services-do-you-pay-for.2598374/