Hello world my name is Francisco, fcoterroba on the Internet and today I’m bringing you a post where I’m going to talk about Amazon’s music streaming service. My opinion after relegating Spotify and using it for three months.
Before starting to dissect it, I recommend you read one of my first posts, where I give my first impression about this service, exactly three months ago. Visit me!
My first visual touch was of amazing simplicity, without any load of advertising banners or too much information that distracts us from what really matters, listening to music.
Its interface is configured like in most online music services. On the left, a menu where we can navigate through almost all options. In the central part we’ll see all the possibilities with which we can interact according to what we’ve clicked in the menu and finally, in the upper part, the player controls and the song search.
On the other hand one of the things I like most about Amazon Music is that it’s an online player without needing to download anything, so if we’re on someone else’s PC or another place, you just have to log in and that’s it.
Very intuitive and easy to use. In simplicity lies the good and the quality.
As for the catalog, I haven’t found, from what I’ve tried, artists that are on Amazon Music Unlimited but not on Spotify (so I haven’t found any of the 20 million songs that are different). When you type an artist, the screen at first is a bit confusing, because you don’t access their own page. Anyway, nothing that can’t be fixed. The most listened songs of each group or singer appear, the albums and the recommended playlists. Nothing new under the sun.
Don’t expect to find differences in sound either. The quality is quite good, so you’ll only have to worry about the audio of the support from where you’re listening to it. Apparently on mobile, other media that have done the test have tried to raise the compression level and it still sounds decent. Bravo Jeff Brezos!
When you choose a song, you visualize with a bar its popularity level and its duration, and you can do different actions. When you hover over the song duration, three dots appear that allow you to share song, add to a playlist, search for more similar songs or add to My Music; this last option you can also activate it in the + that appears at the end of the band where the theme name is embedded.
Let’s continue: one of the weak points of Amazon Music Unlimited is the recommendation of similar artists. You have to sharpen artificial intelligence to improve proposals, and let’s give an example. If we put Joan Manuel Serrat, they recommend as similar Ana Belén (okay), Dúo Dinámico (we’re already going wrong) and Juanito Valderrama! Will it be because of the first name?
In the left menu, there’s also an area to store what we download, to review what we’ve listened to most recently… It’s not new either.
What I’ve liked most about Amazon Music Unlimited is, without a doubt, its playlists. True that Daily Mixes don’t exist nor Spotify’s WONDERFUL Weekly Discovery, but I must say that, in general, the playlists prepared by them are a real hit. I think they don’t have the same offer as their direct competitor but, unlike Spotify’s, they nail the selection.
That is, in the list of 100 Classics of the 50s, for example, no one is missing or missing; the one of Great Spanish Hits of the 80s is a real delight and the one of ‘Working at full speed’ I’ve saved it in my favorites to listen to it also at home, quietly, with a great selection.
In short, and regretting very much that I’m going to miss these ‘playlists’ so cool, there’s nothing in Amazon Music Unlimited that would make me change from my Spotify Free to paying for this streaming. The services are very similar and, precisely because of that, for being the pioneer, for usability, environment design and familiarity, I’m staying with my ‘Spoti’ of a lifetime.
One of the things that struck me most is that, when in the desktop version you want to leave the music control buttons, you can’t add this to any playlist or even raise the volume.
Another thing that has puzzled me is its library that, although they claim to have 30 million more songs than on Spotify, as for indie music, I’ve seen in Amazon rather little. Groups like La Raíz, Vetusta Morla, La Habitación Roja, Los Planetas, Miss Caffeina and others.
Continuing with the library topic, the ‘hit’ that recently came out of “La Pared” sung by the Granaíno Dellafuente and the Malagueña, Ana Mena, came out a couple of days later on Amazon, comparing it with iTunes, YouTube or Spotify. It’s true that’s already a matter of record labels and music labels but, it’s a point to take into account.
In summary, Amazon Music Unlimited is fine, it’s a platform to take into account and that I recommend trying, especially and with many positive points if your computer ecosystem already has a bit of the Amazon language (you have Echo, you’re Prime, etc.)
I’ll continue with Spotify 😀.
That’s all for today guys, I hope you liked the post and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. See you next week! sources: elle.com and profesionalreview.com