Nov 2022 changes to Amazon Prime Music

koru

As of the start of November 2022, Amazon has made some major changes to Prime Music. I wonder what MSE people think about this.

They are doing their best to present it as an upgrade, and perhaps for some people it is, if they don't care exactly what music they listen to. The supposed upgrade is that the catalogue of music is now the same as the full Unlimited catalogue. That eliminates what used to be the downside of Prime Music, which was that a lot of music was not in the catalogue.

Unfortunately, at the same time they have hobbled the Prime Music offering because it is now only available in shuffle mode and they insist on inserting other music into the shuffle stream. So, if you want to play, say, Taylor Swift's new album, it will do it, but not in the order the album is meant to be played, and it will be intermixed with other stuff that Amazon thinks is similar, such as Lewis Capaldi or Sam Smith. 

For me, this makes Prime Music useless and I'm guessing the same is true for most Prime Music users. They obviously want to push Prime members into paying an extra £9 pm for Unlimited. For me, it may lead me to cancel Prime altogether, because Prime Music helped make it worth paying £90 pa for Prime. I don't watch much Prime Video. I'm usually happy to wait a few days for free delivery, so I can easily manage without Prime delivery and pay extra when I need it next day.

I wonder if this is going to backfire for them?

Mnoee

I'm on a prime free trial at the moment, and used the music player while out today - utterly infuriating trying to find an album that would actually play in order. I figured fine, I'll listen to a random 'radio' channel of an artist I like, the second song was Coldplay. I had to stop and turn it off. 

I'm on the cusp when it comes to music - my formative teenage years contained both CD albums and dodgy napster downloads. I can appreciate both shuffling and albums, but it's impossible to filter to just show albums available to listen to in full when that's what you want - unless I missed something obvious. I can listen to thousands of different radio stations online for free, it's not something I'd ever pay for. 

koru

Going down the albums in my library the only ones that will now play in full are the ones I bought from Amazon. This is such a cynical move by Amazon. I wonder if they have hired someone from RyanAir?

Mnoee

There are definitely some, I listened to a whole 20 minute EP... but after that I found nothing I fancied despite searching for at least 5 quite different artists.

If you do tire of paying for prime, they offer me about 2-3 free months a year and a few 99p weeks on top. I'm in an amazon household with my partner, so we share amazon benefits - he gets the same offers, so we end up with prime for about half the year for less than most people pay for a month.

Edited to add: just realised the ep may have been something my partner bought at some point! 

koru

I've ended up buying the annual family plan for music. I've got five family members to join in, so it costs £30 each for a year, which is a bargain. Unlike Spotify's family plan, there's no requirement for the members to live in the same household.

So, Amazon has gained £149. But three of us have cancelled our Prime memberships, since the music component of Prime is now worthless. So Amazon has lost 3x90= £270. This has cost them a net £120 over the next year.

Billxx

koru said:

Going down the albums in my library the only ones that will now play in full are the ones I bought from Amazon. This is such a cynical move by Amazon. I wonder if they have hired someone from RyanAir?

Yep, I am of the same mind.  They have rendered the service basically useless now unless you pay.  We have stopped using it.

jono1975

Are Amazon delivery and prices actually better than competitors now?  The only other benefit I really use a lot is the photo storage.  I could buy some disks for those but makes them less accessible.  Maybe look at another service for that.

Prime music is really worthless now, I can live without the video.  It's getting harder to justify prime now the price has increased as well.

Mnoee

jono1975 said:

Are Amazon delivery and prices actually better than competitors now?  The only other benefit I really use a lot is the photo storage.  I could buy some disks for those but makes them less accessible.  Maybe look at another service for that.

Prime music is really worthless now, I can live without the video.  It's getting harder to justify prime now the price has increased as well.

Ebay is almost always cheaper for the little household bits I buy - recently got some sewing thread, zips, a flour duster, pipe cleaners... All cheaper on ebay. Just not as fast.

I'm usually happy to add little bits to a list and wait til it's £20 for free delivery if I want something from amazon - or pick up some cleaning products, guitar strings, coffee beans... The more you use amazon, the easier it is to do without Prime as I can always think of something that can be topped up to hit the £20!

In three years I've needed something I could only find on amazon with next day delivery only once, (specific cat food for my fussy mogs after another supplier was exceptionally slow) and just bought a single month of prime. 

MSE has an article on cloud storage, like everything else - there's plenty of cheaper options. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/broadband-and-tv/free-online-storage/