Ad-free stations and X-Ray lyrics finally being added to Amazon Prime Music in the UK

The old adage better late than never seems to comes to mind here. Six months after the release of Amazon Prime Music in the United Kingdom, it looks like Amazon is finally bringing its ad-free prime stations and X-Ray lyrics to you users across the pond.

While Amazon Prime Music already offered subscribers access to over a million songs, ad-free, there was no real way to put the app on “auto-pilot”, say like Pandora. Now subscribers will be able to just pick an artist/song and allow Amazon to do the work for you. Of course, via a handy thumbs up/down button, the stations can then be further personalized by the user so it becomes better over time. In addition to this, while you are listening to a song, thanks to Amazon’s X-Ray lyrics, you can refer to your phone to see what the lyrics are at that exact moment of the song.

These new features come at no additional cost to those of you already subscribed in the UK. All you have to do is open up your app and enjoy all the ad-free goodness!

Press Release:

Amazon expands Prime Music streaming service with the launch of ad-free Prime Stations and Lyrics in the UK

Prime Music now offers hundreds of ad-free internet stations available to Prime members at no additional cost to their membership

X-Ray Lyrics also added to Prime Music, allowing customers to follow song lyrics as they listen  

Luxembourg, 27th January 2016: Amazon has today announced the addition of Prime Stations to its Prime Music streaming service, allowing Prime members unlimited access to hundreds of ad-free and personalised internet radio stations at no additional cost to their membership. Prime Stations is available through the Amazon Music App on iOS, Android, Kindle Fire HD/HDX, Mac, PC, and the web.

Whether it’s pop, rock, indie, classical, film scores, R&B or opera, Prime members just need to find a genre, artist or decade they like and hit ‘play’ to hear a continuous stream of music that can also be paused, replayed, or skipped without any restriction or interruption from ads. Listeners can hit ‘play’ on an artist station and enjoy some of their best tracks along with unlimited songs from similar artists. As listeners listen and give songs a thumbs up or thumbs down, each station will adapt to their music tastes meaning a completely bespoke experience for each listener.

“With Stations we’ve introduced another feature for Prime members to discover great music at no additional cost to their membership,” said Steve Bernstein, Director, EU Digital Music at Amazon. “Whether customers are on the move, at work or entertaining, there’s no shortage of choice with hundreds of Prime Music Stations to choose from. And with the skip, thumbs up and thumbs down functions, customers can take full control of their stations and adapt them to their music tastes.”

Another feature recently launched on Prime Music is X-Ray Lyrics. Available on Kindle, Fire TV, iOS and Android devices, X-Ray Lyrics lets Prime Music listeners seamlessly follow along to lyrics onscreen on tens of thousands of tracks while songs are playing.

Here are just a few of the hundreds of Prime Stations available:

80s Pop 90s Indie All R&B Ariana Grande Bastille Best of Prime Music Blues Rock Beyonce Blur Bruno Mars Carrie Underwood Charli XCX Classic Indie Coldplay Dance Pop Eagles Easy Listening Ella Henderson Ellie Goulding Eurythmics Film Scores Fleetwood Mac Florence + The Machine

HAIM Imagine Dragons Instrumental Jazz Iron Maiden Jason Derulo Jessie J John Legend Joni Mitchell Kaiser Chiefs Katy Perry Kelly Clarkson Kylie Minogue Laura Marling Little Mix Marvin Gaye Meghan Trainor Missy Elliott Modern Country My Chemical Romance Nicki Minaj New Age Of Monsters and Men Olly Murs

One Direction OneRepublic Opera Music Orchestral Classical Passenger Pop Classical Reggae Rita Ora Ryan Adams Selena Gomez Sia Simon & Garfunkel Snow Patrol The Beatles The Maccabees The Rolling Stones The Vaccines Top Hard Rock Train Usher Vocal Jazz Walk the Moon ZZ Top

 

Stations and Lyrics join the Prime Music service just six months after its launch for UK Prime members in July 2015. Prime Music gives Prime members in the UK unlimited, ad-free access to over a million songs, hundreds of Prime Music Stations and hundreds of hand crafted playlists at no additional cost to their membership. Visit www.amazon.co.uk/primemusic for more information.

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Amazon’s first ever Super Bowl ad has Alec Baldwin planning a party with the Echo

Amazon this morning released a teaser of its upcoming first-ever Super Bowl ad featuring the Echo. American actor Alec Baldwin, and the former Miami Dolphins quarterback, Dan Marino.

The ad features American actor Alec Baldwin and the former Miami Dolphins quarterback, Dan Marino. In it, Baldwin and Marino are hard at work on preparations for Baldwin’s big Game Day party on February 7. Marino suggests that Baldwin have a snack stadium at the party, and a confused Baldwin quickly asks the Amazon Echo, “Alexa, what is a snack stadium?”

As you might expect, Alexa was able to quickly prove Baldwin the information he needed on what a snack stadium was. You can check out the ad for yourself below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

One thing that always amuses me in these ads is that the products are never this efficient and quick in a real-life scenario. The Echo is very much still in work-in-progress, with some users having to ask it the same question multiple times in order to get an answer (in all fairness, though, the Echo is getting better with every update). That’s not necessarily the Echo’s fault, as it’s the problem with all voice assistants, including offerings from Apple and Google.

Either way, it’s still a nice and relaxed ad demonstrating the uses the Echo has in a real-life scenario.

Amazon will air a follow-up ad to Baldwin’s journey of creating the perfect Game Day party with the Echo on February 7.

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Amazon brings one-hour Prime Now deliveries to Liverpool

After launching one-hour Prime Now deliveries in London last summer, Amazon brought the option to Birmingham, Newcastle and Manchester before year’s end. The retailer has grand plans to take the convenience to “many more cities in 2016,” today announcing Liverpool and nearby areas as the latest expansion. Customers living in eligible postcodes in Liverpool and adjacent settlements including Birkenhead can now pay £7 to have any of over 15,000 products delivered within one hour, or select a same-day, two-hour window for free.

The catch, of course, is that you need an Amazon Prime membership — currently £79 per year — to take advantage of the speedy delivery option. That may have become a slightly more attractive investment today though, with Amazon also announcing a new playlist feature for its Prime Music streaming service.

Source: Amazon

Amazon adds playlist ‘stations’ to Prime Music in the UK

Ten months after its US debut, Amazon is bringing Prime Stations to its music streaming cohort in Great Britain. The feature allows Prime Music listeners to launch ad-free playlists centred around an artist or genre, removing the need to queue tracks or weigh up individual recommendations. As you jam along to Amazon’s picks, you can give each song a thumbs up or thumbs down to improve and personalise the algorithm. While welcome, this is a feature that many of Amazon’s rivals have offered for years — why it’s taken so long to reach Prime Music in the UK is a mystery. Still, if you have an active Prime subscription, this should make the service a little more viable as your default streaming app.

Source: Amazon (Press Release)

Amazon and Netflix go on movie shopping spree at Sundance

As the streaming war rages on over original content, the most active buyers at the Sundance Film Festival aren’t traditional studios and distributors. Instead, Amazon and Netflix, both of which tout portfolios of original series and movies, are behind a lot of the action. The 11-day festival started late last week, and so far, Amazon had purchased four films while Netflix secured three. While the latter company is said to have its sights on more, The New York Times reports that traditional distributors have been much less active.

Amazon paid $10 million for Manchester by the Sea, a Kenneth Lonergan drama that stars Casey Affleck as a handyman dealing with family woes. Don’t expect it to arrive on Prime Video anytime soon, though, as the company has loftier ambitions. “For every movie that we do, we want as robust a theatrical run as the film will support,” said Ray Price, the head of Amazon Studios. Amazon also secured the documentary Author: The JT LeRoy Story, Complete Unknown starring Rachel Weisz and Love & Friendship, a period piece based on a Jane Austen work.

For Netflix, The Fundamentals of Caring has been the big purchase so far at $7 million. That sum gave the company global streaming rights to the film that stars Paul Rudd, Craig Roberts and Selena Gomez. It also nabbed Tallulah, starring Ellen Page and Allison Janney, for $5 million and a horror movie that’s set in Iran called Under the Shadow. If you’ll recall, Netflix debuted Beasts of No Nation last year, making it available for streaming and distributing it to theaters.

For now, theaters are still important, if for nothing other than attribute value to the films that are shown there. “The theatrical model continues to have a lot of value, especially because it means something to viewers when films play in theaters,” said Howard Cohen of Roadside Attractions, a company that’s working with Amazon to distribute Love & Friendship. Some viewers may think that when a film releases on a streaming service and at the theater at the same time, it may not be very good. You know, like the movies that head straight to DVD.

No matter how the streaming duo plans to make its new library of films available to the masses, it’ll be interesting to see how the two further impact the film industry. As both Amazon and Netflix look to pad the lineups of original offerings to lure new subscribers, we could see more and more films debut on the festival circuit before making their way to streaming services.

[Image credit: Jason Merritt/Getty Images]

Amazon still wants to be in your hand, just not with its own phone

In 2014, Amazon entered an entirely new world by releasing the Fire Phone. The company designed thought consumers would relish a handset designed by their favorite online retailer and all of the services it runs. But Amazon thought completely wrong. The Fire Phone was met with bad reviews mostly because of limitations and price. While Android was present, the software was covered with an underwhelming forked version. Owners of the handset were forced to use Amazon’s restricted app store and other software features that just didn’t add value. On top of mid-range specifications, Amazon was charging a high-end price. The Fire Phone cost hundreds of dollars off-contract and AT&T was the exclusive carrier. It took more than a year for the company to realize how awful everything the handset was, leading to layoffs and price cuts.

The Fire Phone was ultimately put to rest in September 2015, but Amazon isn’t giving up on phones anytime soon. People familiar with Amazon’s internal discussions told The Information that the company is seeking software partnerships to get better placement on mobile devices.

Amazon is seeking to go further than having its apps pre-installed on devices. Amir Efrati of The Information writes that “Amazon has discussed working with phone brands at a “factory level” to integrate its services with devices in a deeper way than simply preloading apps as it currently does.” The assumption is Amazon wants content from its online store, primarily video and audio, to be displayed prominently on partners’ devices. Sound familiar? It’s what Jeff Bezos’ pride and joy already does with the very successful Fire tablets. Amazon wants to circumvent Google beyond just allowing the Amazon Appstore to be sideloaded as an alternative to Google Play.

Unless the company is shelling out big bucks, Amazon is going to have a hard time getting hardware manufacturers to give up complete control of their own software. Most companies producing Android devices either have their own apps and services or rely on Google to make them. Outside of Flipboard’s arrangement with Samsung, hardware-software partnerships generally stop at the pre-installed apps level. Even if Amazon gets its way and someone to agree to their terms, consumers will have little reason to choose their offerings over Google’s.

Source: The Information
Via: Engadget

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