They recently announced that they Prime customers have free access to a considerably expanded selection of music.
I was very rude to Alexa the other day after requesting a particular group was played when she advised me to follow the steps required to purchase one of that band’s albums and advised how to enable purchases via the Echo device!
Can’t say I’ve used Amazon Music much in recent years, but is this a step backwards if there are more tracks available in theory but an artist’s songs are now primarily available in playlists/mixes of similar music or you have to purchase? Maybe it’s always been like this.
This free tier is not a full blown service you can’t add to your library or choose an album to play in full only play radios based on any track. It’s basically Pandora. You need the subscription one to have an equivalent of Spotify, Tidal etc.
While you can argue it’s a free perk, it isn’t really as it’s part of the Prime package which you pay for. It’s also changed though hasn’t it looking at comment on Amazon’s forum?
TBH I tried and cancelled Amazon Unlimited ages ago, mainly because the Amazon Music App is awful and unintuitive, second due to the inability to easily stream ‘hi-res’ to the Nova.
I gather that Prime Music users now have a limited number of ‘skips’ per hour too if they don’t like the ‘similar artist’ being played.
There are several furious parents who had created bedtime lullaby playlists for little Johnny/Jacinta’s evening routine played on the ‘kid’s Amazon device’ - seems now the kids are getting adverts telling them how to upgrade to Unlimited and extolling the virtues of the expanded catalogue - hilarious really
I think this move will cost Amazon a hell of a lot of goodwill - I can also see my annual Prime subscription is going up from £79 to £95 - still fairly cheap for next day delivery and Prime Video but I don’t use the other services much, nor can I see me using Prime Music after this change.
This is clearly a move to badger people into paying for Unlimited, I think people will look elsewhere or just stick with what they have (Apple Music and Qobuz for me, already ditched Tidal as it added little and curated even more crap recommendations than Apple Music does!)
From what I’ve heard I think many people are rude to Alexa (and Siri), because they never ask nicely, the word ‘please’ being somehow forgotten. It is a bit like ordering a slave to do something, which I find highly distasteful.
I have never ‘used’ either Alexa or Siri - but if I were to for some unimaginable reason, I would ask politely.
BTW, from the thread title I thought this was something to do with the UK’s rapidly expanding list of living ex-prime ministers!
Because it is my nature to be polite - something that sadly is all too lacking in today’s society. Why use different language when talking to a machine?
Well I indicated my annoyance to ‘her’ quite directly the other day after instead of playing audio I got instructions on how to sign up for fully paid Amazon Music to do what was possible before with a Prime subscription.
The speech interactions are stored and potentially analysed so possibly the quickest way of sending feedback to Amazon about an unwelcome change!
I don’t really see any need to use ‘please, thank you’ etc when issuing voice commands to a device, especially as you really want short concise instructions. I don’t think I’ve seen any examples from Amazon advising one to be polite to Alexa.
Indeed, I believe people will test the boundaries of what these devices will respond to, and they are likely to be programmed to respond discretely say to rude questions. The novelty aspects however mean users get emails advising them of Alexa skills, for example how to play a compilation of ‘fart noises’ - probably entertains kids but not really something I’d want from such a device.
