Amazon Becomes Fastest-Growing Music Streaming Service (ft.com) 28
The music app that is adding subscribers to its service at the fastest rate is not Apple Music or Spotify or Google Music, it is Amazon, Financial Times reported this week [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From the report: The number of people subscribing to Amazon Music Unlimited has grown by about 70 per cent in the past year, according to people briefed on its performance. In April Amazon had more than 32m subscribers to all its music services including Unlimited and Prime Music. By contrast, Spotify, the world's largest streaming service with 100m subscribers, is growing at about 25 per cent a year. "Amazon is the dark horse [in music]," said Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Midia Research. "People don't pay as much attention to it [as to Apple and Spotify], but it's been hugely effective." [...] Amazon has gained momentum in recent months, propelled by its ubiquity with consumers and Alexa, its popular intelligent assistant, which can play music through voice commands issued to its wireless Echo speaker.
Mmm Hmm (Score:2)
As a representative of the everyman Amazon customer, I stream free music thru the Amazon and occasionally pay for a song to justify the privilege... they had me from Hello.
Damn. I see what you did there Bezos.
Re: (Score:3)
I have prime, use prime video all the time, and needed some specific songs for a road trip to a concert, so I tried it out. Their Android app is terrible. After a few hours of repeatedly attempting to create a playlist and have it actually play properly, I finally gave up and deleted the app. They have too many ways for a playlist you are currently playing or creating to just vanish and have to be recreated from scratch because you looked at the wrong thing in their interface.
They need to improve their inte
How much of your paycheck? (Score:3)
Re:How much of your paycheck? (Score:5, Funny)
You're not alone. I do pay for Amazon Prime, but I refuse to pay for anything else Amazon owns, including cheap Amazon brands.
The exception to that rule is the Kindle. No one makes a Kindle-like device with the same book access and that's downright sad. Barnes & Noble exists, but they lost when they tried to push the Nook and now it's very unclear where they stand (even though apparently they still sell eBooks branded with Nook).
I have a similar attitude about Comcast. I refuse to deal with them... Well except for cable TV. I do subscribe to their premium packages, but I simply refuse to get their foreign language bundles. Otherwise, the only exception to my boycott is internet service; I do have Comcast's broadband service, but only because it's slightly better than the alternatives. Other than that, nothing. I don't even watch NBC. (Except for some shows I like.)
Re: (Score:2)
No one makes a Kindle-like device with the same book access and that's downright sad.
That's actually good.
I don't want my Android tablet to be tied to a particular vendor.
Kindle is just a super-crippled Android device. There is really nothing good about it (except for its low power display technology, and even then, the difference isn't that huge to make me want to switch).
Re: (Score:2)
"Kindle is just a super-crippled Android device."
You can install the play store on Kindle devices these days, and could always sideload software. What's super-crippled about that?
*yawn* (Score:2)
In the meantime, I put my turntable back in business over the past two weeks. Got a new belt today. New cartridge last week. Adjustments to stylus rake angle this week.
The thing sounds bloody amazing.
Got my 600+ records out of storage. New Ikea furinture for them.
An LP and a double whisky after work, that's how I blow steam off, and I wonder why oh why I let my table sleep for 12 years.
I missed it so much. So glad to have it back.
Apple, Spotify, Amazon, etc etc bla bla will not get me. I prefer the
Of course, the smallest is the fastest growing (Score:2)
When you're the smallest, it's easy to grow quickly in percentage terms. If you have 1,000 users, adding 1,000 more is a 100% increase. If you have 1,000,000 users, adding 1,000 more is just a 0.1% increase.
It's called math.