
Amazon Prime Music - samiq
http://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/promotions/prime.html/
======
L_Rahman
1\. Given my listening habits, the library feels limited. Tried searches for
the three albums I listened to the most this month
([http://www.last.fm/user/labibrahman/charts](http://www.last.fm/user/labibrahman/charts)):

    
    
      Sylvan Esso - Sylvan Esso
      Chet Faker - Built on Glass
      Tycho - Awake
    

None are available for streaming. For a standalone service, this would be
damning. As one of the perks offered with Prime this has the potential to
become a compelling part of the package.

2\. Amazon's store interface is not well suited for consuming media. I tried
watching a few episodes of Friday Night Lights on the service instead of
Netflix. Spoilers in episode descriptions meant that I had to very
specifically control where I let my eyes over the UI. Next episodes don't auto
play. Perhaps most annoyingly, there isn't a standalone URL I could go to for
my streaming needs. To watch an episode I had to carry out the following
steps:

    
    
      Navigate to amazon.com
      Search for Friday Night Lights
      Skim the results to click on the TV show
      Remember what season I was on
      Skim the episode descriptions while avoiding spoilers
      Click to stream, and make sure I don't accidentally click
      on the 1-click buy button which is annoyingly right next
      to the stream button.
    

My flow on Netflix:

    
    
      Navigate to netflix.com
      Click on the continue watching pane on top left corner of my screen.
    

I want Amazon to be a legitimate competitor in the space, but running
everything through the store interface is killing any chance of me using Prime
as a media consumption service.

3\. I suspect that this works many orders of magnitude better on the Kindle
Fire line of devices and that's great for people who already own Kindle Fires.
If I don't already own one though, the Prime ecosystem should be driving to
make that purchase and right now it is failing at that task.

~~~
bambax
1 million songs don't sound like a lot; the total number of original songs is
something around 20 millions, so 1M <= 5%

Besides, how do they decide what's free as prime and what isn't? My songs
aren't free to stream for example

[http://www.amazon.com/Bambax/dp/B00KB5NT6G/](http://www.amazon.com/Bambax/dp/B00KB5NT6G/)

but I wouldn't mind if they were; how do I opt in?

Edit: not 0.5 but 5%!

~~~
antimagic
Where did you get the 20 million figure from? It seems _very_ low. I mean,
there are millions of apps on the Apple AppStore. Surely, after decades of
creation, there must be tens of millions of albums, and an order of magnitude
more songs?

~~~
vertex-four
Until extremely recently, it's been near impossible to get people to listen to
your album without it being in a store. These stores have traditionally had
gatekeepers in the form of record labels. It doesn't seem that low if the
question is "how many songs have been written under record labels which have
access to the stores".

------
bradleybuda
The UX for this is very awkward (unless I'm missing something) - the "store"
and the "player" are completely disjoint experiences with only a few marketing
links between them. You can't actually add new (free) "Prime Music" to your
collection from the player - you have to jump to the "store" to discover the
music you want and add it to your cloud library. Nor can you play full songs
from the "store", even if you have Prime and they are free - you are limited
to 30 second samples.

The amazing thing about Rdio and Spotify, and what makes streaming services
different than their MP3 purchasing predecessors, is that you can think "I
want to listen to Kanye", type "Kanye" in to the search bar, press enter and
listen. Amazon is making this whole process very awkward by adding a "buy"
step (even if no money is changing hands).

The reason that Spotify is disruptive isn't that the music is paid for via
subscription pricing - it's that it eliminates the distinction between "music
I own" and "all of the music ever recorded".

~~~
SilkRoadie
It is no better than their Amazon Instant Video. Their video offering is
pretty terrible. Takes ages to move between menus. You cannot just continue
from where you were previously. It doesn't skip the credits and offer the next
episode. The whole thing is painful to use compared to Netflix.

Another example. Yesterday I was looking for a TV show I was watching. I went
into "Your TV Shows" and it wasn't there. It had been pushed out by other
shows I watched. Instead it appeared in "Recently Watched." It is so
unintuitive.

I have a prime account. I wouldn't mind cancelling Netflix and Spotify but
can't while the user experience offered by Amazon is so horrible.

~~~
cwyers
Amazon's UX on Prime Instant on the PC is so terrible, their discoverability
on ANY platform is awful, and they have restricted HD streaming of Prime
content (i.e., stuff you don't have to buy) to non-PC platforms only. And I've
had far more problems with buffering on Prime Instant on Xbox 360 than I have
ever had with Netflix, despite watching roughly five times as much content on
Netflix. It's ridiculous.

Their music offering looks like more of the same. Lower selection, poor
discoverability, a second-class UI on PC. I really wish Amazon would stop re-
purposing their storefront UI for every product they can, and actually design
a decent UI for their various products.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
We access Amazon Prime Video through the Roku, and I can't believe it's any
better than on the PC because it's awful.

While I like their site for shopping, etc., their content delivery UIs leave
much to be desired.

------
andrewguenther
This is seriously a usability disaster. I have to go through the normal Amazon
store to add music to my prime library? I have to leave the player to find
music to listen to? No thank you.

~~~
wging
>I have to leave the player to find music to listen to?

You don't. cloudplayer.amazon.com -> type in search -> look at right-hand
side.

~~~
BrandonY
Nope. This is also a disaster. I typed "daft punk" into that box. Daft Punk
has four full albums available for prime music. None of those albums are in
the search results. Instead I get a "Daft Punk's Top So..." playlist, and
"Hot, Sweaty Summ..." playlist, and "Janelle Monáe and Mo..." playlist.

I can't fault free new music, but this interface feels like it was poorly
bolted on to a retail sales website, which is exactly how the web video
service has always felt.

Edit: I just realized that 3 of the albums are in the search results. I turns
out the right tab is scrollable, and after 15 items, it switches to showing
matching albums, which includes 3 of the 4 Daft Punk albums, and also some
Macklemore.

------
adamnemecek
Well this product is dead on arrival

[http://i.imgur.com/hBVq7pp.png](http://i.imgur.com/hBVq7pp.png)

~~~
gamegoblin
I just discovered that as well. And it just so happens that 3 of the songs by
the artist I wanted were all non-prime. Very lame.

~~~
talmand
Dead on arrival? How? Why is there the expectation that every song in an album
would be free under Prime?

"This free music is lame because it's not the music I wanted for free?"

Do you tell stores their free samples suck because you wanted a free sample of
a different product?

~~~
VikingCoder
I don't know how many people are like me, but the atomic unit of listening to
music for me is an ALBUM, not a SONG.

So, for people like me, to try to explain to people like you...

Why is there the expectation that every second in a song would be free under
Prime?

~~~
talmand
You shouldn't attempt to put people into groups before you know which groups
people would belong to.

Sure, I understand, there are many albums that I enjoy in the entirety and not
so much with individual songs.

You can always buy the albums.

As for you question, such a thing already exists; they are called samples.

------
millstone
Prime subscriber here. Cool beans. I found some of my favorites.

But I also found a lot of spammy crap. I searched for Smashing Pumpkins, and
it's pages of "1979 [A Tribute to the Smashing Pumpkins]" or "Disarm [In The
Style Of The Smashing Pumpkins]". It takes some work to figure out, no, they
don't actually have them.

I'm reminded of Steve Jobs's line with the introduction of the iTMS:

 _" This number [of songs] could have easily been much higher, if we wanted to
let in every song. But we realize record companies do a great service. They
edit!"_

Here's hoping they can grow their library, but in the meantime, please don't
give me piss when I search for rain.

~~~
talmand
But I thought keeping record companies as the gatekeepers was bad?

I'd rather I decide for myself if I like a song or not and not a corporate
business decision maker decide for me before I have a chance to hear it.

------
ctz
Note that this only applies to US Amazon Prime accounts.

If you are an Amazon Prime customer in another region, Amazon will ignore that
and ask you to start another Amazon Prime subscription. But I doubt your
second Prime account will actually come with any of the advertised benefits.

Which, for an international company with accurate knowledge of my billing
address, is misleading and hamfisted.

~~~
moystard
Got surprised as well to see that they were proposing me subscribe to Prime
when I have been a Prime member for more than a year. Realised that I was on
the US website, and the music streaming does not seem to be accessible for UK
customers.

------
psychometry
Isn't anyone interested in owning their music anymore? Have we all become such
casual consumers of music that the concept of building a permanent library of
music they like is unnecessary?

I will never understand the appeal of subscription music services.

~~~
swombat
You're not alone. My blood congeals at the idea that access to the music I
love is somehow restricted by a third party with a different agenda to mine. I
have zero interest in a third party streaming service. Now, if I could install
my very own self-hosted Spotify-alike, stick all my music on there, and stream
it to my devices with a smooth wireless connection that works even when I'm in
tunnels, then you've got me as a streaming music customer.

~~~
samolang
Both Amazon and Google let you import your existing libraries and stream them.

~~~
jimmyhmiller
I'm a prime member, have been for a while. I just tried to import my library,
it said I had 250 songs I could import for free. It then asked me if I'd like
to pay $25 to upgrade so I can import any number of songs. I was able to
upload all my songs to google for free.

~~~
samolang
Dang. Didn't realize that Amazon charged you past a certain number of songs. I
have my whole library uploaded to Google as well. I usually use spotify, but
it comes in handy sometimes (like when I want to listen to the Beatles).

------
lzlarryli
The classical collection seems to be small. For example, 24098 out of 658027
(3.7%) pop albums are prime, but only 894 of 171251 (0.5%) classical albums
are prime. I expected the other way (wishfully, as a fan of classical music),
that older less popular music is cheaper to be made prime for Amazon. Strange.

~~~
kolev
Isn't the classical also cheaper to license?

~~~
justincormack
Not sure. The consumers of it are generally wealthier so it has always been a
"premium" market, even if smaller. The fact that much of it is out of
copyright doesnt mean you dont have to pay performance rights...

~~~
kolev
Makes sense. I also find myself primarily listening to classical music, and,
as a side note, I hate that apps like Shazam, Google, and SoundHound can't
recognize most of it.

~~~
ternaryoperator
It's not just those services and apps, it's pretty much anything that has to
do with music.

Try rippig classical CDs and you quickly discover how bad the online music
registries are at identifying albums, how bad ripping software is at sorting
out composer from artist, etc.

In nearly all aspects of software dealing with music, classical is the odd man
out. It's a constant frustration.

------
quotient
Wow. This is outstanding. Amazon is solidly developing a one-stop centralized
base of entertainment. Even more enticing is that it's _free_ with prime, and
even if you don't have prime, it's worth getting prime for: a small fee for a
year's access to most music/films you could want. And then you have prime,
which makes it much more enticing to buy products on Amazon (due to cheaper,
faster delivery). Smart.

(I am aware that Amazon's music library is currently not as large as that of
its competitors. I think it is reasonable to assume that this will change in
the near future.)

The more significant thing to note here is that the general trend in online
businesses (obvious examples will include Google, Apple, and Facebook) is that
every business is trying to create its own walled garden --- they try to
provide all the services that any user could need, such that the user would
not do business with any competitors, and so the user would interface with the
business as much as possible. Apple did a remarkably good job at this with
iTunes back in the day --- they were the first to provide access to a massive
online store of entertainment and to integrate it very heavily with their
products.

Amazon, however, is taking the cake in this respect. Their products are
extremely well-integrated: www.amazon.com is gradually becoming a one-stop-
destination for most media and for general shopping. Perhaps this is due to
Amazon's perseverance: I've never seen Amazon weaken its hold on a particular
share of any market.

~~~
jbarham
> I've never seen Amazon weaken its hold on a particular share of any market.

I can see AWS being squeezed by outfits like Digital Ocean and Linode on the
low end and Google Compute/App Engine on the high end. Anecdotally, I used to
run some servers on AWS but moved them to DO & Linode as they're cheaper,
faster & simpler.

~~~
clarkm
Yeah, DigitalOcean and Linode are great if you just wanna run some servers.
But AWS is much, much more than that.

~~~
derefr
It is; I just spent the last two weeks putting together a very handsome
CloudFormation template that can attest to that. I'm almost considering
creating a custom CF resource provider to let me spawn DigitalOcean droplets,
though.

(And to let me use CloudFlare CDN distributions instead of CloudFront ones.
Amazon need to either _finish_ CloudFront, or kill it; this purgatorial state
where it works but it takes 30 minutes to make any changes, and where only
half of its APIs are exposed in the SDK libraries, is obnoxious.)

~~~
kolev
I love CloudFormation, but, unfortunately, it's much neglected, doesn't
support latest features, and is completely missing major services. The
language is so primitive, I had to write custom extensions that compiles to
their format. Another rarely used, but very power service is SWF - I bet CF is
built entirely on top of it.

------
kmf
Seems like the library is a little limited. As of tonight (2014-06-11 23:19
PST), two of the top songs on Rdio and Spotify are "Problem' by Ariana Grande
and "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea. Neither are available on Prime Music, only for
purchase on the normal MP3 Store. I suppose the advantage is a lot of people
_already_ have Prime, but I don't see any reason to jump ship from either Rdio
or Spotify for this.

------
curiousAl
If this can match spotify's catalog any time soon, AND be available as an app
or (usable) mobile site, ad free: RIP music services. This is an enticing
offer for those on the fence about prime, given that spotify premium is $120 a
year. For the same price, you get prime, spotify, a bit of netflix/hulu
(hopefully more to come on the video end).

Pretty brilliant move.

~~~
jychang
For the price, this is a really good deal. However, some people (like me) have
over 200+ spotify playlists with over 100 songs, and 20+ ones that I actively
use.

If they want to capture spotify's market share, just having a large enough
catalog wouldn't cut it. They need a easy way to convert the spotify library
into their apps.

~~~
kolev
Maybe they will introduce Amazon Second, which for $5.99/mo will offer larger
streaming catalog. :)

------
TheCraiggers
This has the same problems that I have with Prime Video:

1) The interface is rather horrid when compared to services in the same
category, like Netflix. Others have already expounded on this though, so I
won't waste the bytes.

2) I hate, hate, HATE being told I have access to all these movies/songs, only
to find that the content I searched for isn't available to stream unless I pay
extra money on top of the service I already have. Logically I say that it's
better to have extra options- but I've never gotten as mad at Netflix for not
having what I want to watch as I've gotten at Amazon for having what I want to
watch, but needing to pay extra.

~~~
bredman
Interesting, I've have had the exact opposite experience for #2. If there's a
movie, or TV show that I want to watch I'd rather pay $5 to watch it than just
be told it's not available. This has had such a strong effect on me that if
there's something in particular I want to watch I go to Amazon before Netflix
simply because I know I will more likely have an option to watch what I want
(even if it costs money). Personally I feel like Netflix has back themselves
into a corner by only having one all-inclusive price level.

That said the part about Amazon that infuriates me is when they have the
movies available but not for rent and only offer the pay $15 to own option.
Also the Netflix discovery/browse is experience is light years better than
Amazon's.

------
greenyoda
In addition to the music that's available via Prime, they have an "auto-rip"
feature that automatically adds to your music library any tracks from physical
CDs that you've purchased from Amazon in the past. Very nice.

~~~
thesimon
Sometimes the price for the CD's with auto-rip is cheaper than the MP3 only
price. Quite strange.

~~~
brianwawok
I am sure it has to do with contracts and apple. "No one can sell the MP3
cheaper than we sell it".. but no mention of a CD + autorip.

Or thats how I ended up with a frozen CD that cost -$.50

------
sytelus
It costs $10 per month for on-demand streaming of 16 million songs in
Rhapsody. By that calculation, this offer would cost $7.5 annually. So it's a
smart move for Amazon to lure people to Prime by sacrificing small fraction of
revenue.

I'm a user of Rhapsody for almost 13 years now and love it not having to buy
individual 100s of artists I listen to. Amazon's 1 million song collection is
peanuts for me but for most others it might be enough. I see we are now only
few months away from true commoditization of music business (i.e. pay monthly
subscription to use all you want like electricity and water).

------
kolev
Limited selection like Prime Instant Video, but at least it's available on
Android (although the app doesn't seem to support the new service yet and is
butt-ugly). On a side note, I don't really get why Amazon is twisting our arms
and doesn't offer Instant Video on Android outside of Google TV and Kindle
Fire. I care less about their free videos, but I've purchased digital content
and I'm not able to watch it on my Android tablet. Do they really think they
can make me buy Kindle Fire just for that?

~~~
tootie
This is most interesting for me. They are deliberately withholding an android
app for streaming video, but they are dipping their toes in with streaming
music.

~~~
kolev
They just updated their Amazon Music app in the Play Store. It's a complete
revamp!

------
digitalsushi
I am a USA prime account holder with an account that was renewed in January of
this year (2014). I was curious why the amazon prime music page indicated I
needed to upgrade my account, so, I clicked 'upgrade for 99 dollars'.

It went ahead and renewed my prime account with today's date, and sent me a
new welcome email.

It's completely unclear if it has consumed my previous subscription with over
half a year left.

So be cautious... probably I did not read enough!

~~~
digitalsushi
My edit expired - Here is the deal. A person can share Amazon Prime with other
people - family, friends, etc - but the primary benefits such as this music
are available to only the primary email address holder. So when I said
'upgrade account', even though the Verify Prime indicated Active, it was not
active for music. The upgrade button instantly charges 99 dollars.

------
weisser
> Over a million songs and hundreds of playlists.

This line reads like it's by Rhapsody in 2002.

------
willu
I was actually pretty excited about this because they happen to have a lot of
music I listen to (electronic). I loaded up about two dozen albums and
downloaded their Android MP3 app. Tried to play a track and was told the track
was no longer Prime eligible. The whole album grayed out and when accessed
says "We're sorry but this album is no longer available in Amazon's catalog".

------
mynameishere
Searched for a number of things unsuccessfully then found that Neil Young is
on it. Okay, tried to play "Harvest" and it refused. The _previews_ for the
same album work, but only after letting the Flash widget run (I use
flashblock). The Prime videos use Silverlight, so that was never an issue. I
can't find a widget hiding anywhere for the prime music, so I'm guessing
that's a bug on their part. Or maybe I have it all wrong. Not going to waste
time debugging their issues.

Has anyone tried the amazon lending library? Absolute rubbish. At least this
has Neil Young, but the problem is, you have to have nearly everything for it
to work. And also you're competing with this:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8odlwI94uFA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8odlwI94uFA)

~~~
plorg
Tried it on Chrome/Linux. Audio appears to be played through a flash plugin
(noted since I have "click to enable plugins" set). Checking the debugger, the
service seems to use HTTP Live Streaming/m3u8 with 10-second, 400k mp2ts
chunks.

Digging a touch further, chunks are apparently encoded to 256-kbps AAC, and
their URLs can be captured and replayed for up to an hour. Reconstituting
tracks, then, is as simple as catting all the chunks together and running them
through libav.

I'm sure there are much easier ways to make unauthorized copies of music, but
this actually seems fairly unprotected, though obviously not 'open', since
it's using a flash-based player.

------
minimaxir
It was smart for Amazon to increase the price of Prime right before launching
music streaming. :p

------
joshstrange
This is another case (IMHO) of Amazon being a "Jack of all trades, King of
none". Prime delivery is awesome, they are king in that arena but video/music
is seriously lacking in the UI/UX department.

They have decent content for free on Instant Video but it doesn't keep track
of what you have watched and navigating is a massive PITA. Their music
selection is sparse and that's me being kind... I paused my Spotify to check
out their OS X app and couldn't believe how terrible it is. Search is
confusing and navigating my library is not intuitive at all.

I will keep an eye on it but they should not have released it in this state.

------
yellowapple
I like the idea, but it seems to be poorly executed with the absolutely-dismal
selection of Prime-eligible music. Good albums missing, good songs missing,
even entire artists missing (even ones that were at one point pretty
mainstream; Sublime, for example).

Amusingly, when searching for "Let It Go", I ended up with virtually every
song titled "Let It Go" that's _not_ sung by Idina Menzel (speaking of which,
the only Idina Menzel songs available are from Glee, and there are a whole two
of them that are actually sung by Idina Menzel). Disney's probably to blame
for that one, but still.

------
tendom
Wooohooo, yet another amazon prime thing that isn't offered to Canadians.
Considering we pay more, get "2 day shipping" which is actually 3 days because
Amazon cant' seem to do math, and get no other services, and Amazon prices are
rarely something to get excited about here, well Amazon, we're done. I just
cancelled my amazon prime account. Apple, Netflix, and Google figured out ways
to get media to Canada, but Amazon decided to suck donkey nuts... again.

~~~
yitchelle
Do feel so bad. My amazon.de account in Germany also does not have this
"prime" feature.

~~~
tendom
Well, I pay $83 a year for prime, I just don't get anything special for it.

------
avalaunch
For those wanting to compare this to Spotify, Amazon Prime Music has about 5%
of the number of songs that Spotify does (1 million vs 20 million). Most
notably, it's missing the entire Universal Music Group catalog as well as most
new releases. At 20 dollars less per year than Spotify, while also offering
Prime shipping and Prime movies, I can't imagine Amazon will be able to reach
any sort of licensing arrangement where they have anywhere near the library
Spotify has.

~~~
tonyblundell
They'll probably run it at a loss until they have the subscriber numbers to
make profit.

As long as they get usable web/phone/xbox apps this will kill Spotify.

------
MikeTV
I want to like this... with Amazon video, I can read reviews, see related
items, and play the video on the same page. With Amazon music I can read
reviews and find related items, but to play it I must first 1) add it to my
library, 2) navigate to the cloud player 3) search for the album in my
library, 4) click play.

After finding an album using Amazon reviews and related items, this is faster:
1) Search GrooveShark/YouTube from the Chrome URL bar, 2) click play.

------
scottm01
Amazon's cloud player was the first music locker I tried (I believe in the US
it predated Spotify along with google music and certainly icloud/itunes
integration). I keep forgetting to cancel my prime account, so I thought I'd
check this out.

Beyond the comments above about UX and library content, I was surprised to
find I no longer have access to my uploaded songs unless I upgrade to
something called "Cloud Player Premium". No thanks.

------
hkmurakami
There was a playlist I actually wanted to listen to. I added it, and I was
okay with the awkward checkout flow until it prompted me to enter credit card
information, despite being logged into my regular Amazon account.

At this point, I gave up and closed the window. I couldn't be bothered to
enter this information when I already have various other streaming services. I
wonder what their stats are like for the sign on funnel...

------
zak_mc_kracken
Can't wait to compare this with Spotify.

~~~
gamegoblin
I just went through my current Spotify playlist and everything was on there.
I'll try it over the next few days. This may be it for Spotify.

~~~
timmaah
Most of what I listen to on Spotify is not available. It is not that obscure.

Mike Pinto, Greensky Bluegrass, The Devil Makes Three, JJ Grey & Mofro, Jack
Johnson, Dirty Heads... list goes on.

~~~
gamegoblin
I guess I just listen to very mainstream stuff... the only in that list I have
heard of is Jack Johnson. I guess it's fortunate for me that I have pretty
vanilla tastes that Amazon seems to serve up.

~~~
timmaah
Very fortunate from what i can tell. Looking at the top 100 albums in their
"MP3 Downloads" section.. not a single one is available to stream via Prime

------
paul_f
Amazon loves running experiments. I am sure they will learn and improve. I'm
not gonna drop Spotify for this, but imagine Amazon will improve this over
time and make it more useful. Hopefully enough to where I can drop the $100/yr
Spotify subscriptions.

------
nickfox
After reading about this on Hacker News, I went straight there to find my
current favorite song, Happy, by Pharrell Williams. It wasn't there so I
bought it for a $1.29. I wasn't happy. Then, I listened to the song a few
times and I was happy again.

------
pessimizer
I wish they would quit rolling all of this shit into a giant monoproduct. I
just want to prepay for postage.

edit: Is this why they raised the prices for Prime? If so, the fact that I
will never use it means they're saying that they don't want me as a customer.

------
Semaphor
Can't use it as Amazon knows about my German account. Weird that it isn't a
problem for Instant Video.

But I guess my next prime subscription will be on a new account that is only
connected to the US. Maybe it will finally allow me to buy TV shows as well.

------
joeblau
> Over a million songs and hundreds of playlists.

When applications like Hip Hop[1] exist and are advertising 45 million songs,
a million doesn't seem that impressive.

[1] - [http://gethiphop.net/](http://gethiphop.net/)

------
theplaz
Not sure why I have to "add" to listen to Prime songs. Can't I play the full
song before adding it to my library? I want to be careful what I add - it's
kinda like a bookmark. I should be able to try it first.

------
scdc
Would love to see this work in the Sonos app. I'm a Prime member & just added
a bunch of albums to my Amazon Music Player via web browser. Switched to Sonos
and the AMP, but only see the ones I've purchased.

------
veidr
Cool. Unlike most things Amazon, such as Prime video, this service works in
Japan, using a US Amazon account.

(I tested quickly using the Mac client for it.)

------
rtanaka
Just in time to go along with their phone that's coming out.

~~~
gamegoblin
It is interesting to see Amazon enter the ring with Google and Apple on the
phones and music market. A few years ago I don't think I would have entirely
believed it. But I guess that's why I don't do any investing outside of index
funds!

------
fargo
Anybody knows if this is going to be available in the UK?

------
TwistedWeasel
Free (with purchased subscription)

------
taskstrike
A lot of comments seems to be negative on this.

As a amazon prime subscriber, this is great for me, here's why:

1\. I have amazon prime for their delivery, and this is basically a free music
service for my mobile that is unmatched by anything else. (Free spotify sucks
on mobile in comparison, and can't be used offline)

2\. Downloaded songs basically gives me a library and allows me to use the
song everywhere.

3\. A million songs is a lot, unless you listen a lot to very esoteric bands,
it works well.

The app is crashing on search for me, but it doesn't matter, the content is so
great I will keep going back. Amazon Prime video already trumped netflix with
their HBO library acquisition. I am psyched to see what they will try next.

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rjvir
I don't see the point - it doesn't have Jason Derulo's latest album, nor does
it have Ariana Grande's.

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Lennu
At first I thought it is free music without ads: "Unlimited, ad-free
streaming. Free with Amazon Prime." I noticed "Listen free for 30 days", so
there is some kind of trick here.

I logged into the system and on the next screen they were asking for my credit
card information which is needed to start a 30 day free trial on Amazon Prime
(after it is $100/year). Prime is some kind of premium service for Amazon
services.

So, Amazon Prime Music is FREE if you BUY Amazon Prime. In my opinion that is
not anyway free, well okay it is for 30 days after that you will get
automaticly charged.

~~~
Domenic_S
What exactly did you think "Free with Amazon Prime." meant?

