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Amazon Is Ready To Take on Apple and Spotify in Streaming Music (bloomberg.com)
Amazon is turning up the volume in the music business. From a report: The world's largest online retailer will mount the first national TV campaign for its music-streaming service, featuring ads with songs from Ariana Grande, Kendrick Lamar and Queen. They're part of a larger effort that will extend to billboards, online video and radio, and to three countries -- the U.S., U.K. and Germany. Music has ascended the priority list at Amazon.com because of the popularity of the company's Echo speakers and the virtual assistant Alexa. Music is one of the most common requests of Alexa, and listening hours have doubled over the past year, the company said. "We're pouring fuel on the fire," Steve Boom, the head of Amazon Music said in an interview. "We have established ourselves as the leader in music services where voice is all you need to control it."
i cant wait to not subscribe to this
and to have the neutered version i get free with prime removed to convince me
if amazon music is anything like amazon, it will be full of fake chinese knockoffs, like Ramar Kendrick, Justin Timberake, and Birry Joer.
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Why bother streaming when it's available commercial-free in a harbor for rogue sailors?
So, does *nobody* really care that one giant MegaCorp is trying to own everything? Even a formerly anti-corporate message board is full of sycophants who can't get enough of Amazon. Me and my family are the only people that I know that don't give any money to Amazon. What happened to everybody else?
I don't respond to AC's.
play Original Nuttah by Shy FX...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I purchase things a few times per week on Amazon. I have the Prime card which is basically a perpetual 5% off discount forever. On the flip side, I walk to an actual mom and pop market in my town. Anyway, despite my interest in the online marketplace when it comes in handy, I don't care about this since I already have Spotify and I'm happy that Spotify does one thing and does that one thing very well. With the family plan it comes out to like $3.00 per month, to have synced playlists across all devices, with different devices set to automatically download for offline listening per-playlist (certain playlists are ready to go for a weekly car trip that includes a few dead zones, just add the songs to those playlists). But if Amazon video and the Kindle Stick are anything to go by, I don't think Spotify and Apple need to worry. The Amazon video applications on smart TV's, Roku, etc have the user interface elegance of a fisher-price edition of WebTV. They are frustrating to use. Not optimized to be efficient to navigate, and dog-slow. Speaking of dog-slow - the Kindle Stick. The point of my ramble is there are others like me who may use Amazon marketplace a lot, but they probably wouldn't leave Apple or Spotify because while Amazon does try to have their hand in everything, they clearly do not try to polish all those things. Amazon marketplace may be pretty decent (to each is own I suppose), but the Kindle Stick and Amazon Video are just 3rd world technologies with the Amazon brand slapped on top of it from an experience perspective.
I'd be happy if they could arrange things so that Prime Video would play without issues on my FUCKING GIGABIT CONNECTION, thank you very much.
I am a subscriber to Amazon music. It was great, probably the best streaming performance with sketchy wifi/cell coverage when I compared to Google/Apple/Spotify (ironically: In my testing about 15 months ago, Google Play was hands down the worst streaming performance.) But the latest updates to the app seem to have this fucked up Alexa bullshit built in, and no apparent way to disable it. It takes my Lenovo t450 and pegs the fucking CPU's all the time as it waits for me to give it a voice command. Fuck that. Will not be renewing.
srsly, the voice control bullshit is just that, bullshit
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
Amazon has gone after food, consumer products, logistics, Internet services, content production for media, and more. Their team is enormous and it is perfectly within the realm of Amazon to go after music. Have you ever seen their Amazon affiliation program? It's perhaps the best and simple program to use for people around the world. You've got millions of websites linking to Amazon for a commission. Their management is solid and their tech team is fierce. I strongly believe that Amazon will continue to be a powerhouse. It's time to invest into Amazon.
What is out there to stop them?
Unfortunately, every other vendor that wants to be single vendor of everything.
The world is a large place, navigating copyright laws is hard and Spotify and Apple have been doing it for a long time. They have barely expanded their prime video service abroad, so I'm not too worried. In most places Spotify is unbeatable and gaining speed.
... and Slashdot, as a community that used to care about corporate overreach, privacy, and personal freedom is dead.
That's a fucking shame.
I don't respond to AC's.