“If you’re already a paying subscriber to Spotify, or huge fan of Pandora, nothing in Amazon’s new Prime Music offering, introduced Thursday, will make you want to switch,” Jefferson Graham reports for USA Today. “That’s not really the point. Because if you’re already shelling out $99 a year for two-day free shipping, you just got another reason to keep your plan.”
“Because beyond the shipping, you now also get access to a limited collection of 1 million songs from two of the three major music labels (as opposed to 20 million on Spotify) and 40,000 movies and TV episodes,” Graham reports. “You can now listen to artists like Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Alicia Keys, Miranda Lambert, Bruno Mars and more on demand, selecting the album and cut you want to hear as you can do a monthly subscription service like Spotify, Slacker, Rdio or Beats Music.”
“What you won’t find are a lot of hits,” Graham reports. “If you’re already a subscriber, you’ll find 30-second song samples pop up when you try to hear a song. What you’re supposed to do is locate the tune, then save it to your Amazon library. Then take another step by navigating your way there to actually hear the complete music.”
“The problem with subscription music is sometimes we just don’t know what we want to hear, so Amazon has many programmed playlists to keep you entertained,” Graham reports. “But if you like Sting, Rihanna, Robin Thicke and Taylor Swift, you’re out of luck at Prime Music. These artists record for Universal Music, the world’s largest music label, which hasn’t come to terms with Prime. Warner and Sony Music have.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Pfft.
Apple’s iTunes Radio offers over 37 million tracks – from all major (and minor) labels – and is free for all users and ad-free for iTunes Match subscribers (US$24.99/year).
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Exactly. A million tracks from two major labels are a million tracks I could care less about. That said, even iTunes Radio etc. have the tendency to only feature ‘the hits’, even from independent groups and artists. Perhaps that’s due to licensing issues, and if so, I see very little difference between these services and good old fashioned FM radio, except that you don’t have to pay for radio. At least Apple had the decency to include that word in their service’s name, I guess. As for the major labels, they still refuse to acknowledge that it’s not the medium they sell it in but rather the shitty product itself combined with their own greed that are responsible for their steady decline. A good parallel would be that cable television has done the opposite – create fantastic, compelling, and original content that people actually want to watch, and they will declare it a golden age (in spite of the greed). 😉
You have to set your station to “Discovery” to get the more obscure tracks to play.
I love iTunes radio.
You know, I have to admit…Amazon’s doing this very well.
Look at it this way: A lot of people (self included) had already joined Amazon Prime because we order enough stuff through them that the free 2-day shipping makes it worthwhile.
So then they added the Prime Videos as a “free” bonus to Prime members…SWEET! Granted, I don’t watch them super often, but for no extra charge? Awesome!
So then they raised the price by $20/year. Honestly, I barely blinked. $20/year is less than $2/month, which isn’t worth my time to worry about it.
Now they add Prime Music, too?? Granted, as someone who also already gets Apple iRadio with my Match membership, it’s nothing I don’t already have…but for anyone who is NOT getting iRadio ad-free, it’s a nice bonus.
I fully expect that in a year or so, they’ll raise the Prime membership cost again ($20-30 increase) to try to make it profitable…it’s a smart way to do it.
And this is coming from someone who thinks that Amazon should be brought up on anti-trust charges for the way they handle ebooks, and now physical books. They’re despicable in some ways, but adding Prime Music this way is a slick move.
Not so smart…
They started to require “bundling” items to get Prime shipping
They increased the Prime annual fee
They removed items (Hachette and Warner) so that your Prime membership is worth less.
Amazon is not moving in the right direction as far as I’m concerned.
I have never had to bundle anything on Amazon to get prime shipping EXCEPT very inexpensive items that cost a couple bucks called “add-on” items.
Amazon is, and has been, conducting a long term, strategic plan of “dumping”. Their investors have forgone profits in lieu of market share and elimination of competition. As they have shown with Hachette, and now Warner, once they have the lion’s share of the retail market they use this to squeeze vendors. Some may say “hurrah! Good for Amazon!” But the producers of creative content, such as publishers and movie studios, will fail in the end without profit margins. Every creative endeavor is a risk. For every winner there are ten money losers. That doesn’t mean the small amount of buyers of that creative product didn’t enjoy and find value in those purchases. It simply means there were not enough buyers to offset the costs of production. The outcome of Amazon’s brutal squeeze is that small/risky creations will never see the light of day, and in the end we may all lose out on many gems as creative talent decides it’s easier to make a buck selling insurance. Amazon prices its wares to kill competition and rope in customers who believe saving a dollar has no ultimate impact on supply. So many here and elsewhere castigate Walmart and what its done to retail in America. Well Amazon is the Walmart of online retail. I believe that Amazon is behind the DOJ’s prosecution of Apple and the major publishing companies (witness the concurrent visit by the POTUS to an Amazon fulfillment center praising the company). If the recent strong-arming of Hachette and Warner don’t open your eyes to Amazon’s true nature once they reach near monopoly status within a market, then you are really in for a shock five years from now once Amazon dominates every market nook and cranny.
I download the iOS app for Amazon Music and I couldn’t get it to work at all. Though I hear its more like Spotify where you can play any song you want, instead of iTunes Radio which is more like pandora.
There is nothing to set up or get to work.
If you have an Internet connection on the device it just works, like any iOS app.
I am underwhelmed by the streaming offerings.
I am sure if you buy all your music from Amazon this app makes sense. If you do not, this app is pretty useless.
Just like everything else.. A lot of old stuff or junk. That also goes for Hulu and Netflix. Basically with VOD/AOD nothing relevant today is on their play list.
If I were on a desert island I would take 1 million tracks over 37 million for sure because iTunes radio picks the song for you. Who wants that? But since I’m not on an island I probably won’t use either service much.
From Amazon? No thank you.
I like to listen music