...it was such an easy system; 2 steps...listen & buy! LOL. P.S. No Prime for me! way too expensive these days...
You can click "help" and then "contact us" and then choose the chat option to chat with a live person. You can even request a call back - and they will call you back. I'm not bothering with any of it, because I already know the answer - the feature is gone because they're trying to get you to join the "club" for a monthly fee. For every one of us who says "screw it, I'm not doing it" there will be at least two (or more) others who will sigh and join the "club".
I think since Amazon started pushing their music subscription service, they've stopped investing in their download purchases. Their samples have always been balky compared to iTunes. Lately, I've noticed that more files are no longer available for purchase. Don't get me started on how they've butchered "your music library."
I noticed quite a while ago that every fewer albums on Amazon had song sampling anymore. Pissed me off.
Also annoying is that you can't buy specific songs from an album, Mp3 cart is gone ....this is really unhelpful, Amazon. I am a Prime member and have poked around but can't seem to find any way to ask them how to do these things. You can search for songs, but on a new album i don't remember the name of every song, and having to type in the artist and/or album in the search bar on the songs page takes me back to the "buy the album" page. Am I supposed to look through every song for sale to find the one I want to buy? THis is really going to put a huge damper in my mp3 purchases. Guess they want me to steal songs from you-tube instead.....
Well, I finally got some answers from the chatbot on Amazon. It said " Due to a change with Amazon Music Detail Page, some features may not be available or may look different. This is intended and some features may be reintroduced later. " It could not tell me when they would be back, but assured me when they did come back they would be better than ever and I would love them. THe features not currently available it listed were : Track popularity, Buy from track, Streaming upsell, sampling & streaming of tracks, disc separator for albums with multiple cds, social share, mp3 cart, mp3 -add to cart, thank you page, add to wishlist, autorip fulfillment, release date, maintaining tracklist order, tracklist segregation for cds. Admitedly I have no idea what some of those items are, but it implied that most would be coming back "better than ever" so I guess we shall see.
I agree with everyone saying that this is just another money grab and an effort to force me deeper into their system. In this case I won't be taking the bait. I will not sign up for either the Unlimited plan or the Hi Rez plan, I don't need either one. I'm 65 years old and I own way more music than anyone needs. Streaming is never going to be the centerpiece of my listening universe although it does have it's place. I have a Spotify premium account and it gives me all I need. I know that Amazon will win this battle and the war, but I don't have to give in and I won't. I am a Prime member and that's it for me.
I’m old-school... I like to own my music. And like you, I’ve got more music than I probably need. I think streaming is great if one is into it, but I’m not. So paying for Amazon Music, Spotify, etc., isn’t on my to-do list. I’ve come to accept that I’m no longer the target market for music, unless it’s some classic artist/album box set or special edition, or a classical music fan where many of the labels still seem committed to physical products. So while I think there might be a chance this Amazon issue is a temporary snafu, I can also accept that they wouldn’t care in the least if I’m upset about the loss of samples because I’m not who they’re after when it comes to music sales. I remember when I used to be a somebody in the eyes of the music industry.
After jumping the obstacles to contact them it will still be impossible to get a straight accurate answer.
I used to use this function all the time. But as it became less commonly available for albums that I was interested-in, I began using youtube more frequently for this function. Unfortunately I have discovered that evaluating via computer speakers simply does not give me a very good idea of how an album truly sounds. Because I have found way too many albums which seem to sound fine through my laptop speakers, but which are nearly unlistenable when played on my main stereo. As a result, I finally subscribed to Amazon HD, and I absolutely love that fact that I can sample uncompressed audio streams via my main stereo now on my Marantz streamer. And the number of disappointing CD purchases I have made has now dropped to almost zero over the past 6 months. And this is despite the fact that I'm ordering more CDs than ever lately due to discovering so much new (to me) music that I love via this service.
Surprised to see recently I hadn't bought and CDs from Amazon this year even though I've sampled plenty of times Bought loads from Ebay Perhaps they found out and this is all my fault !
It's all mystifying to me. I just hope my cd players keep playing my cds. I have found Amazon becoming less satisfactory in many ways for a number of years.
Thanks for doing the legwork. As someone mentioned earlier, when the music you're after is in the cloud, you can't rely on it being there tomorrow.
The albums I've looked up lately on Amazon don't even have a listing of the songs, as they used to for most albums. That's just frustrating. I think discogs and ebay is the place for me, especially since Amazon started passing off on-demand CD-Rs as "new CDs" for many of their albums now.
Discogs and Ebay are the place for me on used cds. Used records and cds are way overpriced on Amazon. I often used the sampling feature and did make Amazon purchases as a result. I can't see how dropping this service is a benefit to Amazon.
I guess that's the thing that gets to me the most. It's one thing not to improve their service, but why do they have to move it backwards?
Everyone is just now discovering that Amazon sucks for purchasing and sampling music? THEY HAVE BEEN ON A DOWNWARD SPIRAL FOR YEARS AND I WILL NOT MISS THEM ONE BIT IF THEY DECIDE TO get out of the business entirely. I only buy from them now if I know what I want and they have the lowest price and that is almost never these days.
I've been trying to find information on this change (especially an Amazon statement), but found nothing so far. Lots of people have been complaining about this on Twitter but it looks like the Amazon Help account that answers them is just a bot giving standard replies: https://twitter.com/SergeyD10/status/1288307483379933185 https://twitter.com/LucioFulciFan/status/1287582484176175104 https://twitter.com/rebecca_linam/status/1287449814855290880
I would immediately look at the record labels, some sort of licensing issue at play most likely, they get crazy if even more than a millisecond of material is streamed out without being paid
The company akamai is, or was, furnishing the sound samples for big A and (most?) every other site using music samples. At least from around 1998 or whenever big A started selling CDs (and absorbed cdnow and musicboulevard). Those music samples were and are always stored on akamai servers and were used from either a direct contract with akamai or some yet unknown (paper subsidiary or effectively that) company running on akamai servers. Akamai Technologies - Wikipedia Any reference to big A has been scrubbed from the akamai site and the Wikipedia page about akamai. This loss of music samples may be a strategic move from big A as they cut into akamai's historical business with big A Web Services - just my guess at this point.
