Comment by L_Rahman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by L_Rahman | Hacker News Reader

1. Given my listening habits, the library feels limited. Tried searches for the three albums I listened to the most this month (http://www.last.fm/user/labibrahman/charts):

  Sylvan Esso - Sylvan Esso
  Chet Faker - Built on Glass
  Tycho - Awake

None are available for streaming. For a standalone service, this would be damning. As one of the perks offered with Prime this has the potential to become a compelling part of the package.

2. Amazon's store interface is not well suited for consuming media. I tried watching a few episodes of Friday Night Lights on the service instead of Netflix. Spoilers in episode descriptions meant that I had to very specifically control where I let my eyes over the UI. Next episodes don't auto play. Perhaps most annoyingly, there isn't a standalone URL I could go to for my streaming needs. To watch an episode I had to carry out the following steps:

  Navigate to amazon.com
  Search for Friday Night Lights
  Skim the results to click on the TV show
  Remember what season I was on
  Skim the episode descriptions while avoiding spoilers
  Click to stream, and make sure I don't accidentally click
  on the 1-click buy button which is annoyingly right next
  to the stream button.

My flow on Netflix:

  Navigate to netflix.com
  Click on the continue watching pane on top left corner of my screen.

I want Amazon to be a legitimate competitor in the space, but running everything through the store interface is killing any chance of me using Prime as a media consumption service.

3. I suspect that this works many orders of magnitude better on the Kindle Fire line of devices and that's great for people who already own Kindle Fires. If I don't already own one though, the Prime ecosystem should be driving to make that purchase and right now it is failing at that task.

The standalone URL for the Amazon movie catalog is amazon.com/vod (for video on demand I suppose). That's both prime and non-prime shows.

The UI is a bit weaker now on the website than it used to be. Before it would gray out the episodes you've watched. Now they gray out the background, but only if you've seen enough of the episode for it to "count". There's also a light green bar showing your progress through the episode on the right hand side.

If you use streaming with an app, like the one on the Playstation, you can click on "Your TV Shows", and it will remember which season and episode you watched last. So I click on the show, and it remembers I'm on episode 10. Barring that I try to remember to keep the most reason season on my watchlist (since unlike Netflix, you can add a season to a watchlist rather than a show)

I agree the autoplay is slightly annoying. At best I've figured out there's a "skip" button in the UI to tell it to play the next, but that's still manual.

Thanks for that amazon.com/vod URL -- I have all the same complaints about their interface but at least I can now skip right to the video library.

1 million songs don't sound like a lot; the total number of original songs is something around 20 millions, so 1M <= 5%

Besides, how do they decide what's free as prime and what isn't? My songs aren't free to stream for example

http://www.amazon.com/Bambax/dp/B00KB5NT6G/

but I wouldn't mind if they were; how do I opt in?

Edit: not 0.5 but 5%!

err 5%

How is 1M a 0.5% of 20M?

Where did you get the 20 million figure from? It seems very low. I mean, there are millions of apps on the Apple AppStore. Surely, after decades of creation, there must be tens of millions of albums, and an order of magnitude more songs?

Until extremely recently, it's been near impossible to get people to listen to your album without it being in a store. These stores have traditionally had gatekeepers in the form of record labels. It doesn't seem that low if the question is "how many songs have been written under record labels which have access to the stores".

18 million on Spotify/Rdio (5 months ago). "Over 37 million" on the itunes store (per apple's website).

Note: The 18MM on Spotify aren't all available to you. They count all songs in their catalog, and many are limited to specific regions (e.g. Europe-only).

I suspect the same is true for iTunes (but I'm not sure)

Gracenote claims to have more than 130 millions of songs in his database.

Source: meta field "description" at https://www.gracenote.com/company/faq/

I had the same result looking for my recent most-played bands. From what I've found so far, the only artists I like for whom they have good coverage are Dave Matthews Band and Pearl Jam. So I guess you're in luck if you love the '90s.

Even the "popular artists" list that they're pimping on the front page is more striking for what's missing than what's there. They don't have the vast, vast majority of REM's discography (including "Automatic for the People"!), most of Pink's albums, anything by Cher besides "Believe", literally any of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' albums that you would have heard of (seriously, why are they even listed?), Shakira's "Laundry Service", "Oops!…I Did It Again" by Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake's second album — and that was just glancing around as I wrote this paragraph. The most confounding part is that there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to what they have or don't have.

Very few R.E.M. albums? Sign me up!

> one of the perks offered with Prime

Just remember that the price of prime is going up $40 a year and part of that new $40/year you are paying is for this. As with many of the perks that Prime gets you it feels like it isn't very good, but it feels "free" so it is hard to complain much.

My fear would be that there are a lot of people that will be okay with Amazon Prime services that are not very good just because they got them for "free" thus stopping new companies from attempting to get in on the same market.

It went up $20 right, is there another increase scheduled?

In the US it's going up $20, from $80 to $100.

I've already resolved to cancel my Prime subscription, and this reveal just confirms my decision. I was happy with getting free 2-day shipping for $40 (or even $80) a year. I'm not happy paying $100 for a less robust "2-day shipping" service, a crappy VOD service, and a music streaming service with none of the music I listen to.

I'm with you. Prime was great for "free" delivery for the physical items I purchased from Amazon.

However, Prime Video is not something I can use. In short, does it work on Linux? No. Therefore, the price increase for no apparent benefit has now priced me out of this product.

Pardon me, but could you expand on "a less robust '2-day shipping' service"? I'm not aware of what you're talking about and would like to know, as I'm currently a Prime customer as well.

They've removed a number of items from Prime, and now left them in a strange limbo of "Add-on items" which can only ship with $25+ orders.

I've also had a significant portion of my orders take well over two business days to arrive, even with Prime shipping.

Edit: sorry $20, not $40 (I was remembering the initial rumors of the price going up to $120)

FWIW, they do have Tycho...

http://www.amazon.com/Awake-Tycho/dp/B00FSU5OFS/

And Chet Faker: http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-textures-Chet-Faker/dp/B009WJ...

I think the trick is: search as normal for music, then click the 'Prime Eligible' checkbox. It didn't show up otherwise.

It's even more weird: it's not albums that are available or not, it's individual songs. An album I've been listening to while I work out: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004ZTL5Q0/ref=sr_1_1_rd?ie...

Blast Tyrant by Clutch. 3 songs from the original album plus one more from the extended album. This isn't an album where there's only two or three good songs, they're all solid gold if you like the genre. And I certainly wouldn't pick The Regulator as one of the top three songs; Ghost feels very similar but IMO has more going for it. So how did The Regulator get picked?

--I must have pissed someone off because I feel I'm being followed around and all of my posts downvoted for no reason at all. Please explain.

Also no subtitle support.

But it does remember what episode you are on, the ones that are bold are ones you haven't seent.

> Next episodes don't auto play.

There are actually some very strict legal requirements preventing streaming-video services from providing "linear content" (i.e. anything that works like a TV channel.) Anyone that seems to do so (e.g. Netflix) still stops every few episodes to get you to press a button to continue.

Happily, this is entirely irrelevant to within-home streaming. Plex can auto-play for as long as you like.

Interesting.

I'd always assumed Netflix required that user behavior on their end to avoid serving content that wasn't actively being consumed so I'm surprised to find that it's a licensor requirement.

They will require you to click on a "continue" button every once in a while if you have no interaction with the HTPC and it's doing auto-play. Perhaps once every hour or two - only slightly annoying.

I've worked in the online video streaming industry and I've never heard of such a restriction. I have heard of such restrictions for music streaming, however. (i.e. to be a "radio" service, a.la Pandora, you cannot have a predictable linear playlist).

Even if you have "auto-play", this is vastly different than the "scheduled content" of traditional TV.

Netflix stops every few episodes because there are per-stream costs, whether bandwidth or licensing (it's a waste to leave shows playing all night while someone's left their computer).

I have created plenty of playlists w/ Spotify that are very predictable and I often play them in a linear fashion.

I've done the same w/ YouTube, but since they have such a wide array of disappearing content; they playlists aren't very predictable in the long-term.

> i.e. to be a "radio" service

> I have created plenty of playlists w/ Spotify

Spotify isn't and doesn't claim to be a radio service. They provide one, but it's a feature, not their premise.

Pretty sure Hulu happily autoplays all day long.

ya and you pay money to watch commercials

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