Included with a $99 Amazon Prime subscription.By Jeffrey L. Wilson When Amazon raised the price of its marvelous Amazon Prime service from $79 to $99 per year, many subscribers wondered what the company would give them to justify the boost. Amazon quickly responded. First, select HBO content became available for streaming in the Instant Video section. Next, Amazon Prime Music—the subject of this review—arrived, giving subscribers fast access to millions of tracks and hundreds of curated playlists. If you already subscribe to Amazon Prime, you'll likely find Prime Music a solid addition, but it lacks several features—and artists—found in Slacker Radio, our Editors' Choice among music streaming services.
A Lot of Genres, Some Missing Artists
The Amazon Prime Music home screen is divided into two main sections: a primary content section that takes up most of the screen real estate, and one column just left of it. The former houses popular playlists and songs, while the latter hosts more than 20 genre categories. You can, of course, search for content by band or song name.
Searching for Led Zeppelin tracks quickly revealed one of Amazon Prime Music's bigger flaws: holes in the catalog. The service offers tons of Zeppelin tribute band content, but no actual music by the official group (Slacker and Spotify, on the other hand, both have access to the Zeppelin catalog). Likewise, I found just one Michael Jackson song—"Will You Be There" from the Free Willy soundtrack. The service also lacks content from Universal Music Group. That said, Amazon Prime Music isn't a total wasteland. You can stream music from popular and not-so-popular artists such as Bruno Mars, The Dirtbombs, Madonna, and Rage Against the Machine.
Playlists, Purchases, and Recommendations
Like Songza, Amazon Prime Music is stocked with hundreds of themed playlists that were assembled by the rather pretentiously named collective known as Amazon's Music Experts. I found interesting collections such as Foo Fighters Top Songs and the oddly named 50 Great Epic Classic Rock Songs. Each playlist displays a track listing, the total runtime, and curator. When you find a track or playlist that you like, you can quickly add the music to Your Music Library (a section where your favorite tracks live) by clicking Add to Library.
Naturally, Amazon gives you the option to purchase these songs, too. You can buy them individually (many are priced between 69 cents and $1.29) or toss a few into the MP3 Cart for a mass purchase.
Unfortunately, if you're looking for Slacker-like recommendations to expand your music horizons, you must look carefully. Recommendations are stashed in the Recently Viewed Items and Featured Recommendations section—a section that's located below the comment section. It's very inconveniently placed and easily overlooked. Even worse, it can be confusing to discern at a glance which items are actual recommendations as opposed to previously eyeballed items. Fortunately, the recommendations on the Your Music Library page are separate from items that you previously viewed, so there's no confusion. I wish Amazon had opted for a more unified user interface.
Importing and Audio
Like Spotify, Amazon Prime Music lets you import music into Your Music Library. To do so, you must install Adobe Flash, download the import app, and manually upload music files. You can also opt to let the Music Importer scan your iTunes and Windows Media Player folders for music and automatically upload the songs.
All your new and previously purchased Amazon music files are stored free of charge, as are the first 250 uploaded tracks not bought from Amazon. If you need to import more non Amazon music, you can import 250,000 tracks for $24.99 per year. The imported music and bookmarked Amazon Prime Music tracks exist as a single playlist within Your Music Library.
Amazon Prime Music takes many cues from Apple's iTunes Match, a subscription service ($24.99 per year) that removes ads from iTunes Radio and fills your iCloud account with tunes that match the music files on your computer. iTunes Match also lets you store 250,000 non-iTunes purchased tracks.
The music streamed to my ears via an Astro Gaming headset was crisp and satisfying. It wasn't audiophile good, but most people won't have an issue with the audio. Still, I favored iTunes Match's audio over Amazon Prime Music's as it was a bit crisper. Apple streams its iTunes Match tracks at a solid 256 Kbps; I've reached out to Amazon for its Prime Music streaming bitrate and will update this review with a response when it's received. Note: Billboard states that Amazon's streaming music will be delivered at a bitrate ranging from between 48 Kbps to 256Kbps, depending on the Internet connection speed.
Not Amazing, but a Good Addition to Prime
By itself, Amazon Prime Music isn't a selling point for a Prime subscription, but it's yet another feature that the service affords. If you want a feature-packed streaming service that offers live radio, lyrics, weather updates, and excellent DJ-curated stations, Slacker Radio is your go-to pick. But if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber who just wants to listen to a few tunes without incurring additional costs—or exploring other apps—Amazon Prime Music is a streaming music service to check out.
No comments:
Post a Comment