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Amazon Prime Music

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Re: Amazon Prime Music

#91

Post by jasonkester »

psychometry wrote: post #63

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.

But here's the thing. Back in the 80s and early 90s, I amassed a very large music collection on cassette. Some of it copied from friends, lots of it picked up from used record shops, and some even paid full price for. Some of the finest butt rock heavy metal ever produced was in that collection.

Then I bought a CD player and started building the collection again. Not surprisingly, the new collection contained different stuff. Not much at all overlapped with the old collection. When I moved, I didn't bother bringing the tapes (or the records that preceded them).

Now I have a pretty good collection of music on .mp3. Some of it is ripped from those old CDs, but a lot less than you'd think. Those CDs are in storage, somewhere, I think. Every once in a while I find a stack of them and do a kind of "yeah, hey, It's the motherf'ing D.R.E... Those were good times." before putting them back.

So I think the idea with subscription services is that they handle the case where your tastes change. If I were the king of guy that really wanted to keep blasting the same Judas Priest album that marked music's perfection back in 1987 today, I could see the point of hoarding music.

But then I'd probably need to go find another black Trans Am (yes, with T-tops & screaming eagle on the hood, just like the Bandit had) to blast it from.

Times change though, and people move on. For a guy with $10 a month in his pocket and the ability to put pragmatism ahead of sentimentality, streaming music services actually do make a lot of sense.

Re: Amazon Prime Music

#92

Post by mhurron »

derefr wrote: post #46
L_Rahman wrote: post #13

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 ): 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 t…

> Next episodes don't auto play. There are actually some very strict legal requirements preventing streaming-video services from providing "linear content" (i.e. anything that works like a TV channel.) Anyone that seems to do so (e.g. Netflix) still stops every few episodes to get you to press a button to continue. Happily, this is entirely irrelevant to within-home streaming. Plex can auto-play for as long as you li…

Pretty sure Hulu happily autoplays all day long.

Re: Amazon Prime Music

#93

Post by caw »

L_Rahman wrote: post #13

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 ): 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 t…

The standalone URL for the Amazon movie catalog is amazon.com/vod (for video on demand I suppose). That's both prime and non-prime shows.

The UI is a bit weaker now on the website than it used to be. Before it would gray out the episodes you've watched. Now they gray out the background, but only if you've seen enough of the episode for it to "count". There's also a light green bar showing your progress through the episode on the right hand side.

If you use streaming with an app, like the one on the Playstation, you can click on "Your TV Shows", and it will remember which season and episode you watched last. So I click on the show, and it remembers I'm on episode 10. Barring that I try to remember to keep the most reason season on my watchlist (since unlike Netflix, you can add a season to a watchlist rather than a show)

I agree the autoplay is slightly annoying. At best I've figured out there's a "skip" button in the UI to tell it to play the next, but that's still manual.

Re: Amazon Prime Music

#94

Post by 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.

Re: Amazon Prime Music

#95

Post by thesimon »

greenyoda wrote: post #15

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.

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

Re: Amazon Prime Music

#96

Post by [deleted] »

theplaz wrote: post #70

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.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Prime Music

#97

Post by err4nt »

stephenc_c_ wrote: post #80
swombat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

You can do that with Subsonic: http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

skip Subsonic and migrate to Plex. I do have a paid subscription because I love the software so much, but here's why it's so great:

The media server can run on Windows, Mac, and Linux, so I have it set up on my web server. You can then use a client on Windows, Mac, iOS, or the web browser to stream music, photos, and movies. You can also share your library with other Plex users, so if you have libraries that are always online, consuming media from iOS for you and your friends can feel very much like your own private Netflix (and Rdio/grooveshark)

It truly is the smoothest way to stream your own media, I've tried them all.

http://plex.tv

Re: Amazon Prime Music

#98

Post by snsr »

andrewguenther wrote: post #12

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.

The Amazon store UI is poorly suited for this task.

Additionally, the player URL (http://cloudplayer.amazon.com) prompts me to install Flash, something I've been unwilling to do for years now.

Re: Amazon Prime Music

#99

Post by bdavisx »

L_Rahman wrote: post #56
derefr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Next episodes don't auto play. There are actually some very strict legal requirements preventing streaming-video services from providing "linear content" (i.e. anything that works like a TV channel.) Anyone that seems to do so (e.g. Netflix) still stops every few episodes to get you to press a button to continue. Happily, this is entirely irrelevant to within-home streaming. Plex can auto-play for as long as you li…

Interesting. I'd always assumed Netflix required that user behavior on their end to avoid serving content that wasn't actively being consumed so I'm surprised to find that it's a licensor requirement.

They will require you to click on a "continue" button every once in a while if you have no interaction with the HTPC and it's doing auto-play. Perhaps once every hour or two - only slightly annoying.

Re: Amazon Prime Music

#100

Post by DanielStraight »

tonyblundell wrote: post #79
psychometry wrote: post #63

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.

To buy the amount of music I listen to on Spotify would cost hundreds of pounds each month, so I prefer to subscribe for £10. I can still buy the obscure/local/unsigned music I want to listen to that isn't available on there. To me the idea of owning music is tied to the need for physical media, which we don't have any more. We don't worry about owning TV shows for example because they weren't traditionally broadcast…

Indeed. I've listened to music from over 2500 different albums on Spotify (thank you, Last.fm). Back in the days of $15 albums and no way to buy individual songs this would have cost me $37,500. With $1 track purchases, things get a little more reasonable. I've listened to around 10000 distinct tracks, so now I'm only spending 80 years worth of Spotify premium for the music I've consumed in 2-3 years on Spotify.

Of course, this ignores the fact that there's no way I could have discovered all the music I listen to without Spotify. Even if I knew of all the artists I listen to on Spotify, I could never possibly have found all their music in physical form. And if I had to purchase all the music I listened to separately, I never would have been willing to explore so much.

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