The price of Prime had to go up one way or another. There is no way they are making ANY money on me with the amount of stuff I buy from them. The free TV and movie streaming was a nice bonus that I've made good use of. As far as I'm concerned, this is fantastic. I'm paying more, but now am actually getting a little more as well. What a concept!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Amazon Launches 'Prime Music' Streaming Service with Access to Over One Million Songs
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You have a valid point as I tend to have a short attention span with music. Before Spotify, I had a very large library of music stored on my NAS that I would only sync specific playlists from depending on my music mood for that week. It became more of a hassle (and expense with storage space) to keep manually downloading items via "other means" compared to what I do with Spotify.
Exactly, this is all about ecosystem. It's been clear for years that the big three tech players with hardware/software ecosystems were going to be Apple, Google, and Amazon. Microsoft might be able to keep up but not likely (although, with Google selling off Moto and focusing more on software and services, I think Microsoft has a better chance; Samsung is trying to gain entrance to that group but I don't think they'll make it). Amazon has been doing a good job recently of encouraging people towards their ecosystem. It comes at the expense of profit margins (aside: that's one amazing thing about Apple is that they maintain impressive margins) but Amazon has never cared about those. They operated in the red for many years while they got started and they still have only a narrow margin (<1%). This gives them leverage.
Doesn't beat Spotify though. Comparing what is available for my interest Spotify cannot be beaten at the moment (for Classical Music). Many more choices and new releases available on the day they came out.
You don't know how much Amazon paid for the rights to do this. May very well have cost 'em $3B, just not as a lump sum to one business.
Agreed. I probably won't be renewing Prime at the new (UK) price. It was nice for the free shipping but hard to justify the price increase for features I don't use.
I do listen to a lot of Music, but Spotify has a far larger selection and has (almost) all Albums available on release date. Amazon has a limited selection and doesn't have new releases. Can't see any reason to ever use Amazon since I already have Spotify.
Video - again, few (if any) new release movies OR TV shows available on Prime. So you have to pay extra for most of the stuff you actually want to watch, anyway. Little to no benefit if you already have Sky or Virgin or Apple TV etc and certainly not worth it if you don't own Amazon's TV device.
Last edited:
Interesting mixes. . .
Checked it out briefly this morning, filtered on Electric Blues Guitar and what pops up in the list? Beyonce; really?, now she's an blues guitar musician?!?
Strangely, neither Stevie Ray Vaughn nor his brother Jimmy Vaughn are on the list.
Hmmmm, that's seems just a bit of a messed up stretch, doncha' think?
Checked it out briefly this morning, filtered on Electric Blues Guitar and what pops up in the list? Beyonce; really?, now she's an blues guitar musician?!?
Strangely, neither Stevie Ray Vaughn nor his brother Jimmy Vaughn are on the list.
Hmmmm, that's seems just a bit of a messed up stretch, doncha' think?
No commercials no ads. Is like having songs you own loaded into your phone; you just select which one you want and play.
-------------
While I don't care too much for this fort rhn to have increased the price of prime; I will take it, it will make a nice addition to my prime.
That will never happen. Also amazon prime video is great and now with hbo shows also included is even better than netflix for me.
----------
Yeah none of them music services alone should be worth $25 for it alone even apple owned. Prefer to pay amazon and get free shipping, video and music.
One Million Pop songs
You're saying access to 1,000,000 songs is weak? Here's some math and thoughts for you (I've been a music collector since the mid 70s and currently an ex-dj):
1)Your 2-3 favorite radio stations probably have a max of 30,000 songs in their bucket to possibly play. If you actually go (or listen) to your stations' websites and sift through the songs they've played the last 30-60 days, you won't find more than 2000 unique songs. I guarantee it.
2)You've probably heard of that thing called the Top40 list...been around for a long time and mainly covers the 40 hottest songs being played on most non-too-specific radio stations...for example, the Top40 list would not reflect an Oldies station or a Classic Rock station or a Rap-only radio station...so here's some math for you...in any given year, there is at best...BEST 100 songs that were worth remembering or playing on a radio station for that year. So in a given decade, there are at best, 1000 songs that were "hits" of that decade. Period. Now...if you want to start counting how many songs should be available for a radio station that "played every hit", you'd really be talking about 1950 until now (yes, there are some big band songs from the 20s and 30s but we will factor that in in a few mins)...so 1950 to present is 6.4 decades. 6.4 decades times 1000 songs is 6400 "hits". That's it. Even if you want to argue that there are more than 100 "hits" in a given year (let's say you find some 100 other great songs that are on die-hard rap channels or alternative rock or whatever and therefore want to double my list to 200 songs per year), doing the math again would get you 12,800 "hits" from 1950 until now.
You could argue that your opinion of all those other tracks on that U2 cd that were NEVER RELEASED are great (again in your opinion) and the math still would fall far short of a million. Let's say each full cd is 12 tracks long...and let's say 1 of those tracks is released and becomes a "hit"....that would mean that 6400 songs (which again very likely has more than 1 hit per artist from the same full cd) times 11 (to add up all the other 11 songs from each disc) would still get you to a total of 70,400 EXTRA songs that you personally feel are worthy of being called a hit...for all those decades...and if you want to call me crazy and double it again you're still at 140,800 EXTRA songs for all those decades.
You're now probably wondering where all those other 800,000+ songs are coming from...well, they are surely alternative mixes, remixes, instrumentals, radio edits on a Greatest Hits compilatin vs. the full Album Version on the original cd, remastered tracks, some songs from the 1920s-1950s (there were far, far fewer releases back then compared to even the '80s), live versions, and probably a boatload of classical music (which can be the same "song" which was done 90 times by different composers/performances), and songs from a very niche market/genre that simply are never or barely covered in any kind of top40 or other normal tracking lists. In essence, very very likely that Amazon's 1,000,000 songs is just that....1 million songs and there are likely tons and tons of duplicates. Look at a band like Aerosmith or Rolling Stones that released (and re-released) the same 20+ songs over and over and over and over. Amazon is likely just counting up all the cds and counting the tracks...not telling you that there's 38 occurrences of Walk This Way on various Aerosmith and non-Aerosomith compilations. I can't even count how many times J Geil's Band's songs appeared on countless 80s compilations...or It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year by Andy Williams.
I have 26,000+ songs in my iTunes library. They are all legal and come from my cd and vinyl collection. I mark songs as 5-Stars that are hits and even ones that I, personally, dislike but it was a hit that other people want to hear. My collection spans from 1965-present and covers mainly top40, rap, classic rock, and alternative rock...I have 4600+ songs in my Top Rated. Have I forgotten to tag a few sure as 5-stars? Surely. Am I missing a lot of "hits" from my Top Rated list?...no way...I might be missing 100 songs if I took weeks to scour online lists of "hits" and compared to my Top Rated playlist. My 4600+ also includes alternate mixes...so I have duplicate "songs" such as the radio edit of Tainted Love by Softcell but also the Extended Mix of Tainted Love.
Trust me, 1,000,000 songs is a boatload of songs...if you can't find a song from that bucket, I'd love to hear your example(s).
Last edited:
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
The difference is that by streaming music instead of listening to the radio, we burn data. Burning data can slip us into higher tiers so that AT&T, Verizon, etc can make more money. AT&T, Verizon, etc provide the subsidies that deliver big profits to the smart device crowd (Apple, Android players, etc). In fact, I suggest that AT&T, Verizon, etc are Apple's most important customers (much more so than us individual consumers).
If you listened to radio or had radio built into smart devices (which would be very easy to do), you don't burn cellular data, AT&T and others don't get to meter such play, and thus there's no money in it. So, if I'm AT&T, etc, I discourage the inclusion of radio in these do-everything, portable smart devices (BECAUSE there's no money in it) and when I get the smart device makers pretty much dependent on the subsidies I pay, I squeeze them to "innovate" functionality that burns more and more data. I think that what gets signature apps like Siri, maps, iCloud, iTunes match, iRadio and so on.
Generally, they differ by them having more control of what gets played and you getting the joy of listening to lots of ads while paying that rent. They also get to control the quality of the files.
If you own the songs, you completely control the playlist & quality of every music file. That playlist is ad free. You could listen to music 24/7 and never burn a byte of cellular bandwidth. After you own the song, there's no money in the ownership model for AT&T, etc or Apple/Amazon/Google (via advertising and/or a subscription model), so it's falling out of favor. Basically, the spin is on to make "stream everything from the cloud" cool, though it's more a play to steam cash from your wallet.
Where does it make sense? Scenarios like this one is best fit for the streaming services...
But even there, if new music discovery is important and profit objectives didn't rule decision-making, good old (free) radio would be a much more cost-effective option to build into our smart devices. He did the math like the streaming cost vs. the individual cost was ALL of the math but he's leaving out the cellular bandwidth cost (which might be spun as "unlimited*" though we know that asterisk does mean something). He's also leaving out that by renting the music instead of owning it, he has to keep renting it in the future. When he chooses to stop paying that rent, he stops being able to access all those songs. Maybe he liked listening to those 40 but might want to listen to only some of them again and again in the future. If that "some" was about 10 or so (about 25% of the new music discovered), owning those make them more economical in that future (where he could pay $0 to replay the owned ones vs. having to continue to pay that $10/month to play them again).
Another scenario would be the one where the new music discoverer spends most of his time in a free wifi zone. That beats the cellular tier hook though it still doesn't beat the forever rent vs. buy-it-once ownership issue.
I think it also may apply well to the crowd who have not yet accumulated much of a music library of their favored music. I suspect that depth of the owned library influences this question. For example, the guy with 50 favorite songs in his music library would likely get bored of that 50 if he tried to get by on only them. However, another guy with 3000 favorite songs can shuffle play such a list for a long time before he might find himself bored with every song.
I suspect the new music discoverers who buy some of their discoveries on a regular basis eventually build up a library fat enough that they become less interested in continuing to pay the rent, replacing it with owned music playlists of accumulated favorites. In other things there's rent, rent-to-own and own. In the latter 2, once something is owned, there's a certain joy in not having to continue to pay for that something while getting to continue to use it in full. There is no joy the other way. Eventually the utility of renting for seemingly greater benefit (vs. owning) evolves into recognizing the ongoing burden of rent. Even down at this cheap, micro-cost level, I think that sense of ongoing burden vs. ownership will show itself in time.
Last edited:
Stuttering...ugh
Amazon really needs to get a bit more bandwidth. Day 1 and far too many people are checking it out. I'm getting a lot of stuttering. Haven't made it through a single song without a stop/start yet.
And as I typed this I got the "We're Sorry, We are unable to complete your action. Please try again later" message as it tried to autoswitch to the next song.
I'm sure this will settle down in a week or two, but really bad first day impression.
Amazon really needs to get a bit more bandwidth. Day 1 and far too many people are checking it out. I'm getting a lot of stuttering. Haven't made it through a single song without a stop/start yet.
And as I typed this I got the "We're Sorry, We are unable to complete your action. Please try again later" message as it tried to autoswitch to the next song.
I'm sure this will settle down in a week or two, but really bad first day impression.
Amazon has work to do -- this is an example of rushing something out the door, but lacking the quality. I just looked at "Classic Rock" albums. Among some of the obvious artists, there's The Fray, Prince, and Nancy Sinatra. Hmmm....I can already stream my 24,000+ songs from iTunes match, plus iTunes radio is not bad, to be honest.
Let's see if Amazon can make this better....
...and it won't play: "unexpected error"
I'll stick to buying products with Amazon...
Let's see if Amazon can make this better....
...and it won't play: "unexpected error"
I'll stick to buying products with Amazon...
I bought Amazon Prime for the shipping benefits. Prime Music seems very similar to Instant Video in that it's loaded with stuff that was cool 6 months ago. That's the deal breaker for me. I want new releases and stuff that is hot right now.
Sticking with my 90-day free trial of Beats Music (which I love) until I see what Apple does with it.
Sticking with my 90-day free trial of Beats Music (which I love) until I see what Apple does with it.
ericinboston, there are albums I can't find in iTunes, and they have a boatload more than a million. Where are the albums Trans by Neil Young, or Face To Face by The Kinks, or... I literally could go on and on. A million is a lot of songs, but if I can't find what I want in 20x that, I surely won't find what I need with a mere million. Just saying.
and this is why in my 'use case' I wont buy into a streaming service. I only use it to discover new material once I hear something I like I purchase it in the highest bit rate possible, because I listen to music everywhere on different sources not all of which have an interenet connection, i.e. ipods
I'd caution a guess that you aren't a very good DJ or music collector.
I mean, just searching initially I only found maybe one out of every 4 songs or albums I was looking for. Maybe that's my fault for not limiting my music tastes to only artists which have charted.