Amazon Prime Music has the chance to be the best music streaming service of all—but it’s held back by a confusing mixture of limitations, design flaws, and other general irritations. But if it could fix these problems, there would be no stopping it from overtaking Spotify, Apple Music, and any other competitors.
5
Skip Limits Should Be Axed Entirely
Amazon Music Prime has a frustrating playback limitation, where you are only allowed a limited number of skips per song—even with an Amazon Prime subscription. This doesn’t apply to music you own—and I have something to say on that, too—or All-Access playlists, but for your created playlists and ones from the community.
This creates a problem: what if it shuffled to the same song, multiple times in a row? You’re then forced into deciding whether to skip that song, possibly wasting it. By extension, it’s difficult to engage with the social aspects of the app, especially the community playlists.
And the music you own? If you listen to someone’s playlist and it includes a song you also own, there’s a chance that skipping it will count as one of your skips. Why? Sometimes it’s because it’s a different version, like a live track, but in those instances, Amazon Music should play the version I own. My experience is already hindered by shuffle play, and skip limitations exacerbate the issue.
4
The UI Desperately Needs an Overhaul
It’s obvious that the UI was meant to resemble Spotify, but I was never a fan of that design, and, moreover, Spotify isn’t without its problems. There’s an artist-to-screen ratio Amazon Music has that makes it counterintuitive—it’s the tiny blocks. The size reduces the detail, making it harder to discern between two artists at a glance, especially since each block uses similar borders. I resort to using text, which itself gets lost among the headers and any titling on the tracks. Amazon Music Prime’s limitations amplify those friction points.
When you scroll through suggestions, the genres Amazon Music separates music into are also unhelpful. Music should be grouped by mood or strong descriptors, beyond the traditional ones like rock, pop, and so on. What do “sounds of summer” or “artist-inspired stations” really mean? As an Amazon Music Prime member, I would like to engage with these playlists, but they should be more specific.
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Amazon Music is well worth your time, especially if you already subscribe to Amazon Prime.
3
More Effort on Optimization
I’ve accidentally hit the Alexa button just as many times as I’ve reinstalled Amazon Music—in other words, it has happened a lot. The app should not be this sluggish, nor crash as often just from simply putting my smartphone to sleep. It runs warm when I run Amazon Music, so I make a point of closing apps that are running in the background.
As a Music Prime subscriber, Amazon’s goal is to get me to subscribe to Music Unlimited, right? However, if the app frequently crashes, I don’t feel confident making that decision, which is further complicated by its other thorny aspects. Not to mention, I’d be paying more since Amazon Music got a price hike.
2
Prime Music’s Shuffle Play Is a Really Annoying Way to Enjoy Music
Listening to Amazon Music with shuffle on isn’t necessarily the problem—it’s when you’re forced to do it. Let’s say you create a playlist with a dozen or so of your favorite songs. With Music Prime, when you decide to enjoy your curated list, you’ll have no choice but to listen with shuffle enabled and with limited skips.
Shuffle is what causes so much friction as a Music Prime subscriber, just for listening to your own playlist. You hope that your music tastes alter the algorithm for All-Access playlists, so you can pick any song and skip to your heart’s content or buy the music.
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1
I Can’t Believe There’s No HD Audio Option
I have nothing against CD quality—it sounds good with a nice pair of earbuds or headphones—but it’s disappointing when that’s all you get with Amazon Music Prime. It’s only with Amazon Music Unlimited that you get HD, ultra HD, and spatial audio options. At the very least, HD audio should be a Prime Music feature to test whether Amazon Music can handle high-quality audio. Music is immersive with spatial audio, so it makes sense that this feature would be exclusive to Amazon Music Unlimited.
It would then soften the blow with how shuffle throws a wrench into playback, but also push users to use All-Access playlists a lot more often. That’s where you then engage with the platform’s social aspect via community playlists and disruption-free playback. Having a playlist that slowly changes based on your fleeting vibes and moods could be really cool if All-Access playlists contained music in HD quality.
Amazon Music Prime, being part of my Prime subscription, is a solid benefit; however, it should ideally be treated as a hook for Amazon Music Unlimited. Saving $1 being a Prime subscriber isn’t an enticing deal—give me a glimpse into what the service truly offers. Unless I see some changes, I might have to abandon the service for YouTube Music or Spotify.
