Usually when I complain about Amazon's strongarm tactics, I'm talking about their self-publishing division. But this time the shenanigans are courtesy of their music division. It's something that really pisses me off but it's hard to get people to care. Not that this will help either.
The way things used to work, when you bought MP3s on Amazon, you could listen to them on the Amazon app in the normal order or shuffle them. If you just wanted to pull up a song and listen to it, you could.
But then near the end of last year, things changed. All the sudden you couldn't play music except in shuffle mode. This seemed weird. Then Amazon finally revealed the full extent of their evil plan. Unless you buy a Music Unlimited subscription, you can only play your music in shuffle.
WTF? I get if it's the Amazon Prime music library that I don't own, but they're doing this with music I already own. If I pay my money for these MP3s, why the hell can they say I can't play them in any fucking order I want? It's my property!
That's what's so infuriating about this. This isn't like Netflix or Hulu or whatever where you don't own the content; this is shit I own. How can you tell me that I have to pay extra to listen to stuff I own? What's next, Prime Video is going to start charging me to use fast-forward or rewind on movies I rent or purchase? Is Kindle going to charge extra if I want to highlight or make notes?
This is the kind of bullshit airlines do, like charging you for checked luggage or being too fat for a seat. It's nickel-and-diming users. It's something that really needs to be shut down before all these streaming services start in on it. It's not enough to get users to pay one monthly fee; you've got to get them to pay a bunch more fees even to use their own property.
Anyway, the reaction on Facebook was of course just "meh," most ignoring it. It'd be good if this could go "viral" because I really do think Amazon is way overreaching here. And there's no need to try to "solve" the problem by telling me to not use it and listen to something else. Already doing that.
At the least, if Amazon is going to do this, they should make an app just so I can listen to the music I own and one for all their Music Unlimited stuff. Really the short-sighted thing about this is a lot of times when I listen to something on the Prime Music or whatever it's called and I really like it, I'll go buy it so I can put it on CDs or MP3s or other stuff to listen to it offline. Taking away my ability to do that, makes it harder to discover stuff I like on Amazon and thus less stuff I would buy on Amazon. To which they'd probably say, "Well get Music Unlimited.." But I don't need Music Unlimited. I don't use it that often where I need to pay $9/month for it on top of whatever I'm paying for Amazon Prime these days.
Amazon is doing something similar with TV/Movies. Last year or maybe the year before they bought MGM. So you think, cool they'll add all that stuff like the James Bond and Rocky movies to Prime, right? But then they roll out MGM+, another goddamned streaming service. So I'm supposed to pay for Amazon Prime to watch some stuff AND pay for this MGM+ to watch other stuff? And honestly, MGM doesn't even have that much besides Bond and Rocky and a few other things. There's not nearly enough to justify paying another however much a month for that.
I really think we've reached that tipping point where there's just too many of these streaming things and pretty soon we're going to see the bubble burst and it'll be musical chairs where some will get to stay in play and others are going to be left out. If you want to kill a golden goose, this is how you do it.
2 comments:
You can only play on shuffle? That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Like you said, you own it. Crap, hope iTunes doesn't decide to do something equally dumb.
And I agree that we are to the point of too many streaming services. People used to complain about the cost of cable or Direct TV, but start adding up all those streaming services and people are probably paying even more.
Yes, that shuffle thing is dumb. Not sure how this can even be legal since you own it. People used to subscribe to a streaming service so they don't have commercials. Well, now the economy versions of Netflix and HBO Max do have commercials. It's like everyone is on the subscription band wagon. One has to keep track of all of them. I just got a new Iphone and now I have an Apple Care subscription just in case it breaks down. At least we can still get free TV and radio by the use of an antenna.
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