Amazon Now Offering Free Ad-Supported Music to Alexa Users in the United States

I would listen to my own music before I subjected myself to more ads, not to mention being limited to what could be listened to. I am allergic to ads.

This is a brilliant way to build market share and sell more devices. Apple is tragically late to the smart speaker game and badly miscalculated their popularity. This is a hugely important strategic area that they have shanked. If they had led the way into home assistants, Alexa would not have taken hold the way it did, I don’t know how Apple gets out of this mess, but they have ceded a huge market to Amazon that will have a crippling effect down the road as all the kids who grow up with Alexa start using Amazon services and devices as they get older, instead of Apple. No reason they couldn’t make an Alexa phone that would probably do much better than their original. Tough sitch for Apple.

Amazon took the market share by basically selling echo dots at disposable prices. They could do this because they, like Google/Android, harvest a bunch of your data, sell it to others, and subject you to ads. I paid for Amazon’s Music service for a year. Maintaining a playlist is a near impossible experience because songs come and go all the time. When my year was done, I canceled without hesitation.

Wrong. Completely wrong. Amazon was first to market with AI and they absolutely blindsided Apple and Google and everyone else who had NO IDEA WHATSOEVER such a thing could exist.

Amazon has been the great innovator of the last decade and they continue to be.

Apple and Google were caught with their pants down.


If a decent Alexa phone is released by Amazon, Apple is toast. I and all my friends will jump off the Apple yaght so fast it will flip over.

Twenty years after Napster, through iTunes, and people circle back to radio?? Says a lot about how access does not often engender interest. Let me guess, these devices have "scan" feature too...

My guess is that you, like me, care about music. The problem is, many people just like to have music on in the background, and don’t care that much. Apple doesn’t offer a tier for those people, and are seeding a huge amount of market share in an area where market share actually matters.

And as far as the quality of Apple Music, it’s certainly better than Amazon music, but still lags behind Spotify in both audio
quality and discoverability of new music. When I play a single song in Spotify, it seemlessly and effortlessly continues to play music similar to that song, and the algorithm for finding similar sounding/feeling songs is much better. Apple Music requires you to deliberately create a radio station based on that song, which is clunky, and then clutters your radio station tab with a station that you might not want to keep around.

I use Apple Music but will consider switching if it doesn’t get significantly better after WWDC.
[doublepost=1556046977][/doublepost]
I have dozens of friends who don’t think or care about tech as much as I do. They all use Alexa and Echo and it works fine for their needs. None of them, not one, has a HomePod. I’m the only one.

Apple is really screwing the pooch here. They need to come out with a cheap HomePod for average users this year, and improve Siri and HomeKit stat, or it will be too late.

We do Spotify now. My wife loves it, I think it works well for what I’ve used so far. Unfortunately, my time for music is less, as my commute is now 10 minutes, and I also have podcasts I like to keep up with. I was a heavy user not long ago, but at this point, I could probably just go without a music service if we didn’t use a family plan.

Amazon took the market share by basically selling echo dots at disposable prices. They could do this because they, like Google/Android, harvest a bunch of your data, sell it to others, and subject you to ads. I paid for Amazon’s Music service for a year. Maintaining a playlist is a near impossible experience because songs come and go all the time. When my year was done, I canceled without hesitation.

My guess is that you, like me, care about music. The problem is, many people just like to have music on in the background, and don’t care that much. Apple doesn’t offer a tier for those people, and are seeding a huge amount of market share in an area where market share actually matters.

And as far as the quality of Apple Music, it’s certainly better than Amazon music, but still lags behind Spotify in both audio quality and discoverability of new music. When I play a single song in Spotify, it seemlessly and effortlessly continues to play music similar to that song, and the algorithm for finding similar sounding/feeling songs is much better. Apple Music requires you to deliberately create a radio station based on that song, which is clunky, and then clutters your radio station tab with a station that you might not want to keep around.

I use Apple Music but will consider switching if it doesn’t get significantly better after WWDC.
[doublepost=1556046977][/doublepost]

Don’t see that brilliant way. Have an echo for that sits unused. If I bought a HomePod it most definitely would be used. However I have no need for another speaker (already have 2) so Apple Music gets streamed to those. As far as the dot, I gave it a shot and dislike Alexa.

I have dozens of friends who don’t think or care about tech as much as I do. They all use Alexa and Echo and it works fine for their needs. None of them, not one, has a HomePod. I’m the only one.

Apple is really screwing the pooch here. They need to come out with a cheap HomePod for average users this year, and improve Siri and HomeKit stat, or it will be too late.