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Amazon today updated its Amazon Music app for iOS devices to version 6.4.0, adding a small but important new feature: support for CarPlay.
With the latest version of the Amazon Music app, Amazon Music subscribers who own a vehicle equipped with CarPlay can access their music directly through the CarPlay interface when an iPhone is connected to the car.
Amazon Music is available to Amazon Prime subscribers, with two million songs, playlists, and stations included in a membership.
Separate Amazon Music Unlimited subscriptions are also available for on-demand listening to "tens of millions" of songs, with pricing starting at $7.99 for Prime members ($9.99 without a Prime subscription). A lower-cost Echo-only plan is also available for $3.99 per month.
Amazon Music can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Top Rated Comments
Either Apple is forbidding it, or Amazon is slow to clue into the opportunity. Makes perfect sense that they would be on as many platforms as possible.
Apple's not forbidding it, releasing an Amazon Video app for AppleTV is entirely up to Amazon, and it wouldn't need to be enormously different than their iOS app. On the other hand, Amazon is not merely not selling the AppleTV, they're forbidding any 3rd party seller from selling it on Amazon Marketplace. Using the pretense that "it can't do Amazon Video and we wouldn't want consumers to get confused" - translation: we want people to buy our FireTV instead, so we're blocking the competition rather than letting it compete on its own merits. (All the more galling because they are the ones creating the problem that they're "protecting" people from.)So, things you can't buy from Amazon:
1. Weapons of Mass Destruction
2. The AppleTV.
I'd like Jeff Bezos to stop being a d*ck and port their existing iOS AmazonVideo app to the AppleTV. I have Amazon Prime and an Apple TV. If there was an app, I might buy some movies from Amazon (direct from the website, they don't have to give Apple a cut - same way I buy my Kindle books and Audible audiobooks). But if I can't watch them on my preferred device, then no deal.
Still waiting for the Apple TV app.
Apple's not forbidding it, releasing an Amazon Video app for AppleTV is entirely up to Amazon, and it wouldn't need to be enormously different than their iOS app. On the other hand, Amazon is not merely not selling the AppleTV, they're forbidding any 3rd party seller from selling it on Amazon Marketplace. Using the pretense that "it can't do Amazon Video and we wouldn't want consumers to get confused" - translation: we want people to buy our FireTV instead, so we're blocking the competition rather than letting it compete on its own merits. (All the more galling because they are the ones creating the problem that they're "protecting" people from.)
The reason there is no Apple TV app from Amazon, is because Amazon doesn't like, and has never liked, Apple's revenue cut. Given Amazon's profit margin, it should be obvious why.So, things you can't buy from Amazon:
1. Weapons of Mass Destruction
2. The AppleTV.
I'd like Jeff Bezos to stop being a d*ck and port their existing iOS AmazonVideo app to the AppleTV. I have Amazon Prime and an Apple TV. If there was an app, I might buy some movies from Amazon (direct from the website, they don't have to give Apple a cut - same way I buy my Kindle books and Audible audiobooks). But if I can't watch them on my preferred device, then no deal.
On iPhone and iPad, with Apple dominating the markets, they had no choice but to simply play by the rules but with a clunky workaround - you can't buy any content in their apps, and the app isn't even allowed to tell you why. The 1-star reviews they get because of this must drive them crazy.
With TV, Amazon senses Apple's weakness in the market and is choosing to apply pressure, by withholding their apps, and blocking device sales. Amazon wins if customers buy Amazon devices instead, or Apple caves. Amazon only loses in cases where the Apple faithful deny themselves a dirt cheap Amazon device, or refuse to use the Amazon app on their smart TV out of principle. Those latter numbers surely aren't going to grow as more and more new TVs come with Amazon apps preloaded.