Amazon Prime customers are having to pay more money if they want to request a specific song from Alexa.
The smart home device normally plays whatever you want, happily obliging for all requests. But now, the tech giant has changed its music service so that users now have to pay for a more expensive subscription to request specific tracks.
Rather than playing songs you have requested, those on the cheapest Amazon Prime package will now have to listen to 'similar' songs to their choice instead. If you don’t like the song the algorithm chooses for you, Amazon only allows you to skip the track six times every hour.
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Another blow to users was Amazon changing the way that playlists work. Carefully curated playlists are now ‘shuffled’ in no particular running order, with random songs thrown in.
It costs an extra £8.99 a month to upgrade to the premium offering. A basic version of Amazon Music is included in its Prime membership, which costs £8.99 a month. For the full version, users have to pay another £8.99 on top for Amazon Music Unlimited.
Customers took their frustrations out on social media, as some claimed that the device was now "ruined." One user said: "Had Prime for 13 yrs & a big feature was the @amazonmusic app. The update made it unusable. Increasing prices & hiding features we used to get included behind a paywall is a gross money grab."
Mary said: "@amazonmusic epic failure. You want more money to stop shuffling my songs? I’ll go back to Pandora. You already raised the prices for Amazon prime. Greed is real!"
A third added: "Shuffle sucks. Will not be blackmailed into paying for service to stop it."
Amazon have been approached for comment.
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