Amazon Music for iOS brings Prime Music to the palm of your hand.
With the announcement that Amazon is providing a streaming music service to its Prime Members, also comes the introduction of the Amazon Music app for iOS. I’ve had several music-type apps grace the screens of my iPhone and have so far been very impressed by Amazon Music.
Originally released as Amazon Cloud Player in 2012, Amazon Music is free to download from the App Store and is currently on version 3.0.0, which was updated on June 12 with the announcement of Prime Music. You can authorize up to 10 devices to use with Amazon Music. The main features of the iOS app include:
- Streaming music from the cloud
- Downloading songs and albums to your local device so that you can listen to them offline
- The ability to create and edit playlists
- Control of from your lock screen
- Bluetooth streaming to your house or car
When you first open Amazon Music, you will be required to enter your log on ID and password for your Amazon account. This will verify that you are or are not a Prime member. Once you log in you are taken to the Prime Music page, which shows you top trending songs and albums. From here, you can select if you want to scroll through songs, albums or playlists. There is also a search field and the ability to select categories.
I do have a couple of notes about the functionality differences between the different views. When you are in the songs view and you tap on a title, it automatically starts playing. I would love to see a swipe function that allows you to view the entire album for that song or more by that artist. In the album view, you tap on the album artwork and you are taken to the album screen. You can choose to play the album from the start by tapping the ‘play’ icon in the center of the album art or you can choose songs, track-by-track. You can also add the entire album to your library for later listening or again, you can choose individual tracks from the album. The Playlist view is similar to the Album view as it gives you some artwork, allows you to play the entire playlist from the beginning or track-by-track. You can also save the entire playlist to your library. Again, because this is a conglomeration of different songs, it would be great to be able to look up more songs by the same artist with a swipe.
Looking at the depth of the Prime Music catalogue, I can say so far I haven’t been dissappointed. I’m sure it’s a bit top heavy with recent hits, but I’ve looked up fairly obscure music as well. For example, I looked up the band Yes (one of my dad’s favorites) and was surprised to find that there were not only single tracks available, but also an entire album from their discography. The same was not true of the Moody Blues, which only had two songs available. This is something that I expect Amazon will continue to expand.
As I mentioned, I’ve had many, many music apps on my iPhone. My favorite in recent days has been Apple’s Music app. I love the Radio feature and of course, the ability to load my own music and custom playlists. Amazon Music is not a replacement for this, but it is a replacement for apps like Spotify. One of the best features of Amazon Music in my opinion is the ability to choose a a specific song and be able to play it immediately instead of having to wait for it to play from within a preset queue.
The functionality and quality of the music is superior than many other music apps, but the design is somewhat lacking. I mentioned a couple of suggestions for features, but I would also love to see better quality album artwork. I’ve been testing this app while on WiFi and the album artwork appears pixelated. I hope this is something that Amazon will clear up soon because it would step up their product 10 times.
I do highly recommend Amazon Music for Prime members. It’s a great way to be able to utilize the Prime Music service and the functions are wonderful on the app for iOS.
For more information on Prime Music or Amazon Music for iOS, visit amazon.com/prime.
