Amazon Prime Music Disappoints

As you may have heard already, Amazon has added Amazon Prime Music to it's Prime service. I have raved about the service since I got it in college as a student; but with the recent price increase to $99, it's getting more difficult to recommend it to anyone and everyone.

Amazon Prime Music will NOT replace your current music source. While it is marketed with over a million songs, the selection is mediocre at best. Other music services (like Google Music which I currently use) have over 20 million songs in their streaming selection. More than likely, you'll encounter music that isn't part of Amazon Prime Music and it'll end up in disappointment. There is no Kanye West! But there are plenty of Kids Pop...

But the interface for Amazon Prime Music isn't user-friendly. You can't just play a song/album once you find it; you must add it to the library first. Then, you must navigate to your library and find it there to play it. It's unnecessary to have those steps for Prime users. It's probably easier for Amazon to keep the same method as purchasing music (since some people still do that) but that's just stupidly lazy. Overall Amazon Prime Music is a huge disappointment.

Another frustrating aspect of Amazon Prime is the lack of an Amazon Instant Video application on the Android platform. This is especially unpleasant since Kindle Fire's Fire OS is built on Android; but making it even more unsatisfying, iOS has the streaming application.

So is Amazon Prime worth the price of $99? If you shop online frequently and like to have your stuff quick (like me), it's definitely worth it. Otherwise, you get a decent but limited selection on videos/music. And if you have a Kindle device, you can borrow one book a month. So, you decide if that's worth $99.