New Users Thoughts

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smokey
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:43 pm

New Users Thoughts

Post by smokey »

Having discovered my free Amazon Music was going to finish on the 26th Jan 2019 (resulting in the loss of playable music on my various Amazon Echo Dot's, Echo and Show's.
I decided now was the time to act and discovered My Media. The phrase goes in for a penny in for a pound, it turns out I need neither as a 7 day trial was free.
So having read a few reviews about how difficult it was to install and it didn't do this or didn't do that, I thought it's free, I'll give it a go.
I am sure some people have had problems installing it but I have no idea why, it was really straight forward and I thought really easy.
As for this and that not working, sure I have found two issues and one point I would love to have work. I am not sure how long My Media has been going but Alexa is still evolving regularly and it looks like it has been going for quite a while longer than My Media.

My first problem was iTunes playlists not playing. I simply exported all my playlist from iTunes as *.m3u files and put them in a folder with my music, disconnected the index to the iTunes library and the playlist work perfectly on their own. I understand it is a workaround but I do see some others have had this issue too.

The second problem is that all my albums have a file Folder.jpg (with the album art in it) and each individual mp3 file has the same artwork embedded in it too. The issue is that some times the artwork is not displayed on my Echo Show, if I ask Alexa for previous track and next track the artwork is then displayed. Obviously it can be found but does not always display it first time. I apricate this is a problem for Show users (and maybe Spot users) but if it could be fixed that would be great.

So now the nice to have thing, currently if I ask Alexa show me my playlists she puts them on the screen and you can scroll left or right tap the one you want to play and off she goes. I then began thinking this might be nice if you could do the same for albums and artists. Once again I understand it would only be useful for Echo Show and Spot users but it would be a really nice to have.

So as a very new user I am really happy I have a fall back plan for when Amazon pull the plug on the Free Amazon Music.
As for an on going subscription, I will of course sign up. As an aside to this I did see people complaining they would have to pay £4 per year to listen to their own music! Well the option is to pay Amazon £4 per month to have a smaller subset of Amazon music which you have no control over what is in that subset, to me it's a no brainer. £4 per year to My Media and have all my hand picked music or £48 per year to Amazon and maybe still not get what you want.

So I will sign up and probably instead of taking the Basic option I may pick a higher option as (I hope) the extra income may make some of the wishes on the wish list happen sooner. You may now be thinking this guy works for My Media or has been put up to say this. Well that's not true these are my own thoughts and I am happy to stick by them.
bizmodeller
Posts: 458
Joined: Thu Nov 14, 2013 8:40 pm

Re: New Users Thoughts

Post by bizmodeller »

Thanks for the great comments - much appreciated.

re iTunes playlists - what issue were you seeing? Was the iTunes library importing tracks ok, but no playlists appeared. Or did the playlists appear but no tracks within them? Or did playlists and tracks appear in teh web interface, but the playlists could not be invoked by Alexa voice control?

re image artwork not showing up - we cant replicate this, but it sounds like a timing issue. How often is it happening?

re selecting playlist / album via Show/Spot - technically this is possible and we will certainly look at whether we can add this as a feature
smokey
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:43 pm

Re: New Users Thoughts

Post by smokey »

re iTunes playlists - The iTunes library imported tracks ok, but no playlists appeared.

re image artwork not showing up - I can replicate this easily. I have just asked for three different tracks and one out of three did not show. I asked Alexa for the next track and the next track appeared OK I then ask Alexa to play the original command again i.e. Alexa ask My Media to play music by the Beatles and the artwork appeared that first time that time.
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