An over-the-air update to the music section of the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick has started rolling out to devices. Interestingly, instead of updating the music section of the Fire TV launcher interface, the update empties the existing music section and places an icon in it which loads a standalone Amazon Music app. This new music app appears to be the way you’ll access Amazon Music through the upcoming redesigned Fire TV interface. So, instead of having a music section as part of the Fire Tv home screen, you’ll just load a music app instead. Here’s an in depth look of the new Amazon Music app.
Before we get into the new Amazon Music app itself, it’s worth noting that the app does not appear in the current Fire TV interface as a regular app, meaning you won’t find it in the Fire TV’s app section. Instead, the app icon only appears in the current Fire TV interface’s music section, which is now completely blank. If you exit out of the Amazon Music app while music is playing, a second panel appears in the Fire TV’s music section telling you what is currently playing. While it may seem strange that the music section is now just a placeholder for a single app icon, this is likely just a way to give customers access to the new app while devices are transitioned to the new interface. I suspect the new Amazon Music app will appear among all other apps in the new Fire TV interface.
Launching the Amazon Music app loads a familiar interface where you scroll vertically to get to different sections and horizontally to see different content. At the top are the four tabs for the four main areas of the app: BROWSE, RECENTS, MY MUSIC, and SEARCH. Note that the screenshots on this page are composed of multiple screens combined into one image. The actual app only shows one row of content at a time. I combined the various sections into larger images so you can see an entire tab at once instead of having to flip through dozens of screenshots.
The BROWSE tab is where you’ll find recommended, popular, and new music. If you’re a Prime member, or I suspect a subscriber of the upcoming premium music subscription service from Amazon, you’ll find albums, playlists and stations here that are available to you.
The RECENTS tab is the smallest section in the new music app. The first row lists all the music you’ve recently played, while the second row in this tab lists music that you’ve recently added to your library. Recently added music is separated into two lists where “Recently Added Songs” are songs you’ve added to your library from Prime music, and “Purchased songs” are songs you’ve recently purchased from Amazon.
As the name suggests, the MY MUSIC tab is where you’ll find all of the music in your personal library. You can browse through your music by artist, album, or genre. You’ll also find your playlists here, including the Prime playlists you’ve added to your library, which are listed as “Followed Playlists.” At the bottom is a list of all of the songs in your library in alphabetical order.
The last tab is the SEARCH tab where you can query Amazon’s vast music collection. Searches will bring up albums, songs, stations and playlists that match your search.
Selecting any album or list will bring up a simple interface where album art appears on the left and a list of tracks appear on the right. This looks to be the music screen of the new interface that appears in the new Fire TV Stick 2’s promotional video, where we got our first glimpse of the upcoming interface.
When you select to play a track, the Now Playing screen contains a full size image of the artist in the background with all other information overlaid on top. From what we know so far about the new Fire TV interface, this type of screen, where text is overlaid on a background image, seems to be a common theme. The Now Playing screen of the new Amazon Music app lists music lyrics in the upper right that are highlighted and scroll in sync with the music.
Most screens in the new music app will bring up more options if you press the menu button. On the Now Playing screen, for example, this is how you control shuffle, repeat, and looping options. From most other screens, you can press the menu button to bring up an option that takes you tot he Now Playing screen.
The new Amazon Music app for Fire TV devices is rolling out as a system app update. This means just the one app is being updated right now and not the device’s entire operating system. Over-the-air system app updates occur silently while the Fire TV is idle with no indication of the update taking place. There is no way to manually force the update, so you just have to be patient and your device will eventually receive the new Amazon Music app.
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Does this music app have a sleep timer? The Amazon music app on one of my phones has a sleep timer and the same app on a different phone does not. Unfortunately the phone that does not have a sleep timer is the very one that I need it.
My TV has a sleep setting, and will pause the Fire TV when my TV turns off.
Great overview. Thanks. Can’t wait for the new interface.
So that explains the “strange” look I was getting when I looked at my music tab, you cleared it up beautifully, good job as usual sir.
SO how would rooted devices get this update? Through a pre rooted rom?
Yes, the next pre-rooted ROM will likely have this new app. If it doesn’t, you could always manually swap out the old music app for the new one since you have root access.
Is the SEARCH searching the whole Amazon Prime content or just My Music content? And could the search results be played directly and/or added to My Music?
It searches all the music you have access to, so if you’re a Prime member, then it will search all of Prime music plus your library. All search results and all Prime music can be played directly without needing to add it to your music library first.
Thanks Elias. Just read your follow up news.
Could we expect Amazon Music app is running on Android TV for example on a Nvidia Shield TV?
If I am update blocked on a previous Fire TV OS version will I lose access to my music unless I allow updates?
No, but you will not get the new app. You will just have to use the old music section. Blocking software updates also blocks OTA system app updates, like this new music app.
On the main screen where you have browse, search, your music etc if you press the menu button does the screen simply go all blurry for anyone else?
It does the same for me. If you have something playing, it goes blurry and displays a menu with the option to go to the “Now Playing” screen. But if you don’t have anything playing, it goes blurry and doesn’t have any menu items to show you. It’s either a bug or there will be more items in that menu when the new interface is ready, so they’re just leaving it blank for now.
There were at least 3 beta versions of the new music app before it shipped, and there have been at least 2 production versions (that I know of) so far, so they’re still working out a few kinks.
Anyone else is missing content with the old music app? For example radio stations, prime playlists, genre playlists are gone. I can only browse my music library. And also content in my library are missing. Amazon removed albums and artists from prime.
Yes, I can confirm this!
With the old Amazon Music App on Fire TV it was possible to browse all available Amazon Prime Radio stations by genre.
With the new App this is no longer possible. You only see a selection of “Radio Stations for You”.
The only way to access the other stations on the Fire TV is to know them by name (browse for them in the mobile App on your phone or tablet) and then search for them within the Amazon Music App on Fire TV.
And here is another thing which got worse with the new App: Global voice search of Fire TV does not find Music anymore, at least not on a German Fire TV, which still does not offer Alexa. You have to enter each word letter by letter in the Music App’s search function.
This is really terrible!
I hope this isn’t the finished product.
Previously if I wanted to listen to a certain album in my library, I would go to “my artists”, scroll at the top to the letter the artist started with, then pick the album I wanted.
Now I go to “artists” and there is no quick way to get to a certain artist without scrolling through them all from the beginning alphabetically. Once there you cannot choose an album from the cover art thumbnail, it has all albums by that artist displayed by song vertically so you have to scroll through potentially a ton of songs to get to the album you want.
Much more time consuming.
Can also confirm voice search does not bring up music, only videos from vevo.
This seems like a step in the wrong direction.
I am having the same issue it, and reported it to Amazon. Impossible to browse a fairly large music library this way, and I often decide what to play by browsing vs. knowing exactly what I’m looking for.
Months gone by and still the same issue for me too. Large library of both Autorip and CD rips uploaded to Amazon Music Library, thousands of albums, it used to be ok to browse on the old version, better than most PC based apps I’ve tried, but now it is terrible.
Use case = “listen to one of my albums by artist x”
Old solution = “Browse Artists -> initial letter -> choose album”.
New solution = “WTF?!?!?!?! Scroll through hundreds of artists to find one ‘song’ by the right artist, then hope that Amazon Music is in the mood to offer the View Album link?”
It’s not as if the ecosystem is incapable of it – the updated Android app has its flaws but is much more usable for albums, even the web based player is better than the Fire TV app.
The new ui has been designed with tunnel vision for people who buy individual songs or solely use the new unlimited service. Album listeners – even those buying digital downloads and autorip albums from Amazon – are left scrolling through a frustrating mess.
Kodi test –
http://i68.tinypic.com/v7wdp0.jpg
Everything Ron said! This update is terrible for those of us who mostly want to listen to our own music. I would add that the search feature only pulls up Amazon Prime music and ignores your own library. This is obviously Amazon driving users to their own content and is a step in the wrong direction. The scrolling through artists and not displaying by album is horrendously inefficient.
Just noticed that with the implementation of the new music app, voice search no longer searches music, only video content. I hope this is only temporary and will be corrected soon?
I have no music menu and no music app! Amazon sucks!
There are imbeciles now in the management at Amazon it looks like. Time to change ecosystem!!
With the new music app on Fire TV, my personal playlists (of which I have over 250) are no longer in alpha order. They are now just a jumbled list of names that require me to scroll through at random.
Anyone else seeing this?
UPDATE: my personal playlists are now in alpha order on my Fire TV. Must have been a bug that Amazon fixed.
Is anyone else having problems with the search tab within Amazon music app since the update?
Ever since the update, the search tab doesn’t return any results at all. I would expect results to be dynamically returned as you start typing which is further refined the more precise your entry etc.
I have this issue on multiple fire TV 4ks since the update in Nov 16.
I just tried the search tab on the Amazon Music app on my Amazon Fire TV and it seems to work fine. It shows the search results for Amazon Music categories first and then the My Music categories. I have never used the search before (I usually just use the voice function or go to playlist), but it seemed to work. I purchased this device from Amazon in December 2016.
How can I shuffle all songs. it just shuffles songs within an artist or album. Even all songs is listed my album not song