Amazon is getting rid of the music storage aspect of their streaming music service. Amazon says that, as of December 18th, customers can no longer use the Amazon Music app for Mac or PC to upload their own music files to later stream through Amazon’s apps and devices.
Amazon has long offered a free and paid option for customers to upload their own music to Amazon’s cloud. Doing so allowed customers to stream those songs through Amazon’s various apps and devices, alongside tracks that were purchased from Amazon or including in one of their music subscriptions. The free option allowed customers to upload up to 250 songs, while the $24.99 per year paid option allowed up to 250,000 songs to be stored.
While customers can no longer upload new songs, they’ll still have access to existing uploads for a while. Those who are using the free option will still be able to stream their upload tracks until January 2019. Those who are subscribed to the paid music storage plan will be able to continue streaming their music for as long as they continue paying the annual fee. If the storage plan is allowed to expire without being renewed, you will not be able to re-start the subscription and will permanently lose access to all stored music.
Music that customers have purchased through Amazon will remain accessible. This change only affects tracks that were imported from a PC. If you’re looking for a new way to access your own music through Alexa devices, mymediaalexa.com and mypodapp.com seem like viable options. Plex also has an Alexa skill that you can use and there are unofficial skills that can play music uploaded to Google Play.
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Son of a b****, I just subscribed for this and was in the middle of uploading.
Guess I better put in a complaint.
A little confused because according to the page:
Paid 250,000 Song Storage Plan
While you remain a paid member, you retain the ability to upload music and renew your subscription.
So I’ll still retain the ability to upload through the app?
Free subscriptions lose the ability to upload immediately. Paid subscriptions will still retain the ability until the end of their subscriptions and at that point will be unable to upload. Both will still be able to listen to uploaded music until Jan 2019.
So you will still get everything you paid for just nothing beyond that 1 year.
Thanks, just wasn’t sure if I was reading it correctly.
Put your music on a memory card and put it into you Fire Tablet. It will play on Echo thru Blue Tooth.
LOL yeah after you initiate playback with the tablet which eliminates the purpose of having a voice controlled speaker
i wonder if this has anything to do with the recent Google talks
GPM lets you upload millions of song for free i think ,hopefully they are not going to be removing their uploading as well
I doubt it. I would think it has more to do with people uploading pirated music.
You can upload 50,000 songs to Google Play Music. I uploaded music to Google years ago. I just got a Google home mini over Thanksgiving and while i can ask it to play my music from the original songs i had uploaded it will not recognize anything I have uploaded in the last couple of weeks. So maybe Google going the same way.
Interesting. I’ve observed the same behaviour with GPM. Older uploaded songs play, newer one give ‘not available in your area’
The work around is to put the music in a playlist. Yesterday i uploaded a cd of barry white. Asked for the album and asked for individual songs and no go. Put the entire cd into a playlist called Barry White and google home could play it and play it in order of the album. the word next worked. However I cannot ask for a specific song within the playlist.
I have 2 million free songs with Prime so I am happy with alexa but there are some specialty albums that i had put in the free 250 song upload. I am going to miss that.
Workarounds for a multi-billion outfit? Not acceptable! Worse still, they claim it works, then refuse to admit that it’s a mess.
The Google fan-boys on the so-called Help Forum do their best, but I suspect they are as much in the dark as anyone else. Google should change their motto from ‘Do no evil’ to ‘Do nothing’.
That’s also happened to me, but when I’ve rephrased the song I wanted playing, it did it.
Complete bullshit. If they don’t reverse this, my Echo and Fire TV are going bye-bye.
Wow. You sound like a real winner.
Listening to my music is the main reason I bought a Echo.
I’m not going to keep hardware that’s been crippled. I’ll sell it and get most of my money back.
How is the hardware crippled? Just use a different service, like Plex. You have a year to figure it out. Calm down. Amazon has no obligation to provide you with storage for your personal MP3 collection. I’m surprised they got by with it as long as they did without running into contract issues with the labels.
I won’t be able to use voice command to play my music. That’s crippled.
Plex or anything else also doesn’t have voice control and I’m not obligated to keep their hardware if it doesn’t do the thing I purchased it for.
Um, Plex does have voice control. Through Alexa. And it plays through the Echo directly as of a couple months ago. I use it frequently.
And while you’re right that you’re not obligated to keep it, calling it crippled hardware is kind of silly. It’s a software feature you want that Amazon no longer offers. It has nothing to do with hardware.
Or he’s just taking advantage of the beauty of capitalism & competition by voicing his opinion with his pocketbook
I completely agree. What a waste. They don’t bother updating there website and they pull the plug? So I went through the hassle of downloading the amazon music app thinking I could get 250 songs uploaded. Only to find out I can’t. What a waste. Never again amazon. Never.
Very against this Amazon. I don’t trust steaming and this is just another reason not to trust big companies with letting me access music or videos I already have on my computer somewhere else. If I recall there’s a hack to get Google Music on the Fire TV.
Thanks for the mymediaalexa link! I’ve been looking for something like that. $5 a year is worth it for a simple solution that only took a few minutes to setup.
Regarding the 250,000 song paid membership, I may be reading this wrong, but on the Amazon site it states “While you remain a paid member, you retain the ability to upload music and renew your subscription.” It also says “New subscriptions will be accepted until January 15, 2018. You can upgrade your Amazon Music storage plan, until that time.” It sounds like if you already have the paid plan (and don’t let it expire) you are ok. If you don’t have it, now is probably the time to get it before 1/15/18 and it is no longer an option. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201379330
Thanks ez that does make things clearer
Sadly no option to renew after your year runs out. Mine ran out today and Amazon removed all of my uploaded tracks! Luckily a CS Rep was able to extend me 2 days while they work out the bugs and get my songs back, however they sent me an email this morning saying all songs would be deleted in a years time! I’ve spent days… (maybe weeks? Ugh! Makes me ill thinking about it…) hours upon hours of time making sure all my Filenames, Tags, Etc… were all in order and uploaded my entire music collection because Amazon Music on my Echo was the best thing I’d ever had for my music collection. I’ve bought multiple Amazon Echos, multiple Echo Dots, a Tablet… all so that I could have my music collection wherever I went. Now Amazon is doing this…
Me too! This is a disaster from Amazon. Time to migrate all my music back to iTunes and get a iHome I guess. Just a horrible move by Amazon. I also spent weeks moving my music to Amazon Music and arranging my playlists. Now Amazon will delete all the music I transferred. Lame!
Amazon eventually fixed my Music Collection, so everything I had uploaded is still available to me, but it took them over a week. I don’t think they handled this well at all. Make sure you contact Amazon CS ASAP as I don’t know how long Amazon’s servers keep your music uploads until it deletes them (they were just locked when the service ran out). Good luck.
This is so stupid. There must be a legal reason for this change. I have moved all of my music over to Amazon as i spend most of my time in the Amazon ecosystem, i have multiple Fire TV devices, Echo’s and Fire Tablets. This may push me towards an alternative (Google or Apple).
I think the uninformed public really needs to understand the legalities of cloud based media, not just music but photo and video as well. You NEVER REALLY OWN or have COMPLETE control over anything you upload to ANY SERVICE, be it Amazon, Google or whomever.
You may think you have control just because its “yours” but you are at the financial, legal, and political whims of any corporation. They can and will do what they want to do in THEIR best interest.
For Example, I laugh (to myself) when I see consumers “purchasing” cloud based movies for convenience(and the “coolness” factor) assuming they will own them for life… time to rethink that! Still they only way to have complete control over your music/photo/video is to have PHYSICAL MEDIA, old school? Yes, but safe.
Agreed. Thats why i still puy physical CD’s
I think the uninformed public really needs to understand the legalities of cloud based media, not just music but photo and video as well. You NEVER REALLY OWN or have COMPLETE control over anything you upload to ANY SERVICE, be it Amazon, Google or whomever.
You may think you have control just because its “yours” but you are at the financial, legal, and political whims of any corporation. Example, I laugh (to myself) when I see consumers “purchasing” cloud based movies for convenience(and the “coolness” factor) assuming they will own them for life… time to rethink that! Still they only way to have complete control over your music/photo/video is to have PHYSICAL MEDIA, old school? Yes, but safe.They can and will do what they want to do in THEIR best interest.
For
Sorry , ignore this second post I don’t know why it posted again!
While I’m relieved to hear that as long as I continue to keep my subscription, I can continue to upload and play all of my music. However this still pisses me off knowing that Amazon (or any shitty company) can and will put something in your hands only to take it away whenever they feel like it. This, the Cloud Drive, and other services and it’s wrong. I’ve spent hours and hours (10’s? 100’s?) organizing and uploading my entire music collection because Amazon and their Echo devices (which I’ve purchased specifically for my music collection mind you…) were the ultimate way to play my music anywhere I wanted to be. After this, Google may be a better option? How do you use Google on the Echo?
you cannot use goole on the echo, other than just playing via blutooth
Google changed their music playing not long ago, because last year I could play my music with “ok Google” on my phone. Now it doesn’t work. I have to do it manually on my phone and then it plays. Amazon Alexa is driving me nuts also. My wife has the Dot on her account. But Prime is my account and she is a family member. She cannot play Amazon Prime music and must “change account” to mine to do so. And if I want to play it, the voice recognition won’t do it, I also must “change account”. This voice thing is still in its infancy it seems.
Maybe someone will come up with a skill to work with Box.com or Dropbox and we upload our music that way to play?
Plex have introduced an Alexa skill for streaming music from a Plex server to the speakers on an Echo. It’s pretty new and it looks like it’s buggy as hell, but I’ll probably opt for that — I’m using Plex for everything else these days.
Just wasted half an hour trying to work out how to upload music, shame Amazon hasn’t updated their own guides!
Absolute cack. So my dj mixes are no longer available. Now i have to put up with Alexa’s piss poor voice recognition to find something i wanna hear which sometimes takes 10 goes.
And another thing how about adding albums selection on the android app? Or better still a search bar to find something you want. The app is so poor and doesn’t take a genius to fix it
Sad face Some people had actually used this as workarounds to run scripts through Alexa. But I think Alexa has other ways of doing most of that stuff now
My complaint is different. I admit, I didn’t read everything on this page, but it appears most people are wanting to upload their own mp3’s to an Amazon player. My complaint is the reverse. I don’t want to stream anything, but I’d rather have the file my own device. As of a short time ago, I can no longer download mp3 files that I PURCHASED on Amazon, to my own device, to play them on my own player. I don’t want to be forced to use theirs! It would be like going to a car dealer and buying a new car, and being told I may only drive MY car on THEIR parking lot. No way! Forget it!
Where was this? I just purchased music from Amazon yesterday and downloaded all my tracks from Amazon Music on my computer just fine.
Wow! I’m glad I got your reply. I tried again, and it worked. I don’t know how it happened, but it didn’t work before. Before, when I would select an mp3 to purchase, the page that normally showed a “play” button AND a “download” button, only had the “play”. The only option I could find to listen to the song was to play it on Amazon’s player. But when I saw your reply, I tried again. I “risked” $1.29 to buy an mp3, and I was back in business. I got the song on my smartphone, and played it on my own player. Hmm… don’t know what happened, but it’s ok now!
Let’s see if this works to make a second reply. I just went back to Amazon and tried to buy and download an mp3 that didn’t work before. It didn’t work this time either! The last page only gave me a “play” button. Maybe it has to do with copyrights? They’ll allow you to download some, but not others? (FYI…the particular song is Simon and Garfunkel, “Old Friends”, from the Bookends album.)
One more time. I looked on Amazon, under My Account, and My Orders. Had to sign in (even though my name already appeared at the top [?]) Then, looked under “digital”. Clicked on today’s song order. Clicked the option to download (yes, it was there, but not on the page where I placed the order). The file that came to my device was not mp3, but a “zip” file. It contained BOTH mp3’s I purchased, the one that I already got with no problems (so now I have a duplicate of that) and the second one. OK. I know a way to get it. It’s pretty squirrelly, if you ask me. Why not give me the same “download” button for the second song?
I’m not sure I understand completely where you are trying to download it from. I’m using the Amazon Music program on my PC, that’s the only way I know of to download or upload my music from/to Amazon. I’m assuming you’re on some mobile device? Happy to know that you were able to figure it out and download it anyways. I’m sure if you ever had a problem, you could email Amazon Customer Service and they’d be able to help you out. I’m almost certain they’d never take away the ability to download your music, otherwise people would stop purchasing it and go back to downloading elsewhere.
Yes, I’m working strictly from my smartphone/tablet. (It’s a Huawei Honor X2, Android.) I’m not using any Amazon app or software, just going to their website to buy a song, and everything else is my own. And yes, I was thinking the same thing. Why would they pass up a chance to sell stuff, even if I don’t want to buy Prime, or get a different music player. I’ll still buy an mp3 once in a while. And now, I’ve solved the puzzle about actually getting the download. I just don’t know why it has to BE a puzzle!
What really stinks about this is adding mp3 from your tablet to music app. Because Amazon always made you upload the mp3 first before you could add to music app on your fire tablet. Since you can no longer upload I can find no way to add music transferred via USB to music app and playlists.
iTunes has failings: however, rather than improve on them, Amazon seems to be intent on emulating them, and making them worse. Amazon has a brilliant game-changing thing in Alexa, but trying to integrate my music with Amazon in order to access through Alexa is a nightmare.
I have tried to “upload” my music using the Amazon Music on my PC – but the circle just spins away. After about 8 hours, I have tried to cancel it, to no avail. Still spinning away. I try to close the program and reopen, but…still spinning away.
The music it has uploaded (from my time with Amazon Music Manager) – it just messes it all up: part albums, different albums, etc.
It seems to me there are two types of music users: those who are not really interested in the ownership and just want to access as much as possible from wherever (eg Spotify users); and those (like me) who have purchased hundreds or thousands of albums in the past (and continue to do so), and want to catalogue, organise, create playlists, etc. Both want to use Alexa – but the second type of music user is being ignored.
If I wanted to be the first type, I’d subscribe to a radio station. But I’m not: I like the feeling of ownership, control, cataloging, etc of PURCHASED music. It frustrates me that the uploading in the Amazon Music program no longer works properly, and as a result I am resolute in not subscribing any further than my Prime level, and sticking with iTunes: the Least Worst Option for music librarying.
I get the fact that companies, artists etc need to monetise: I just wish Amazon, iTunes etc were clear in their intents. They tell me I can “upload”, but I can’t, but there is no real truthful explanation anywhere. Basically – if you have an organised purchased music library, forget about any further support, or satisfactory cloud-based solution – or full Alexa / Google Home integration.
There – at least I hope I’ve saved some music users a lot of time.
I’ll put up with Alexa controlling a messy, disjointed, incomplete library, and use iTunes offline and on my iPhone (and possibly my own server) when I want complete library function.
Amazon music is so prohibitive and cumbersome compared to iTunes that I rarely used Amazon Music. Since Amazon has stopped me from loading my iTunes music into Amazon Music so I could add songs to my wife’s Kindle Fire HD8 playlist I have now dropped Amazon Music entirely. We will probably trash the Kindle Fire and get an iPad to replace it soon.
I have also stopped ordering anything from Amazon since they stopped free delivery for items for which the total cost was more than $35.
There’s only one solution and I don’t like it. Obviously, these music streaming services have; in symphony done a bait and switch on all of us. The “Great” Spotify will only allow you to have 10,000 songs in your library.
As for Deezer, one of these giants will swallow them up and then you can forget about lossless.
These guys know we can get software to move our playlists from one service to another but there is always problems with tagging some songs correctly, missing songs and those songs that at not available on the new service so….f. u.
This was a terrible idea to begin with. We all just got so lazy and cheap, we jumped on this. Now the “devils” are getting their due.
MusConve is very interesting tools for converting music, you can try it for better service.
Funny since i paid the 24.99 and they have removed being able to upload music so i guess you keep giving them money each year to have just the songs you all ready have uploaded i used this to use my Sonos system i bought just to be able to play all my stored music Now What