Problems With Amazon Music? 6 Known Issues (Solved)

Amazon Music is one of streaming giant Spotify’s biggest competitors, along with the likes of Apple Music.

Like the competition, they seek to provide access to an extensive streaming library of music and other auditory content for a recurring fee.

But how does the service hold up?

In this article, we look at common issues with Amazon Music and offer solutions to these problems.

Streaming Issues: The Song won’t Load

A lot of users have been reporting lately that the Amazon Music app and streaming service have been barely functional.

Specifically, there seem to be a lot of problems with getting songs to actually play.

Some users have selected their song choice, and it starts loading…and then it keeps on “loading” for what seems like an age.

However, it is always worth double-checking that there are no issues on your end. 

Here are some quick tips we recommend if you’re struggling to stream songs on Amazon Music:

• Check your internet speed by conducting a quick search in your browser.
• Ensure your device is successfully connected to Wi-Fi.
• Reboot your internet router.
• Restart your device and the Amazon Music app.
• As a last resort, you may need to delete the Amazon Music app and re-install it.

There seems to be a recent rise in streaming difficulty for many users, so hopefully, Amazon Music can come up with a fix before it’s too late.

App Functionality: The App keeps Freezing

There are also a number of users reporting that the Amazon Music application freezing up at random and not working properly in general.

This issue seems to most prominently affect users who leave the app idle for an hour or more.

Of course, it’s a music streaming app; the whole point is to be able to hit play and then forget about it, potentially for hours on end, as it streams music into your ears.

If this is the issue you’re facing, we recommend trying the following:

• Force close other apps that may be running, or hiding, in the background. Too many apps open can cause your device to lag.
• Re-install the app. A file may have been corrupted during the installation.
• Restart your device. Experts recommend regularly shutting down your device as this can help your device recover from possible errors.
• Delete unnecessary downloads and cache storage. If a device’s storage is nearly full to capacity, this can cause Amazon Music to slow down or freeze.

Prime Limitations: Shuffle is the only Option

In November of last year, Amazon Music made a controversial and widely criticized decision: they removed the ability for Prime members to select individual songs to play.

There seems to be a recent rise in streaming difficulty, so hopefully, Amazon Music can come up with a fix before it’s too late.

However, they severely crippled the functionality of their service for Prime users of Amazon Music when they made it impossible for them to just pick a song and play.

Instead, Prime users can only play artists and albums on shuffle mode with their included Amazon Music subscription.

Unfortunately, the only solution here, if you’re a Prime member, is that you will have to pay an additional $9.00 monthly to upgrade to an Amazon Music Unlimited account.

Buggy App: The Wrong Song Plays

The Amazon Music application seems to be plagued with a number of experience-breaking glitches.

Another one of these we’ve seen reported on frequently by users is a buggy interface that does not correctly respond to the inputs you give it.

For instance, you might search for a certain artist only to have completely unrelated search results delivered to your screen.

Perhaps even more frustrating, you might click or tap on the song you want to listen to, only to get a completely different song instead!

In this case, we recommend you try the following:

• Ensure you are running the most up-to-date version of the app. App developers fix common bugs and glitches with new software updates. The latest version of the app is 17.10.1
• Force close and restart the app. 
• Delete and re-install the app.  

Unstable App: Amazon Music keeps Crashing

Perhaps most damning of all, out of any problem a streaming app might have, is Amazon Music’s tendency to simply crash at random for some users.

This problem is more common on Android devices, on which the app is even less stable apparently, but it could occur on iPhones or other platforms as well.

Many users, especially on Android, report that they’re getting crashes so frequently it makes the app practically unusable.

Indeed, if it’s just a matter of time before your app crashes every time you open it up, it’s going to be difficult to get much enjoyment out of using it.

There are some potential fixes for this problem, such as restarting the app or, if that doesn’t work, uninstalling it completely and then reinstalling it.

If you’re lucky, this solution might work. If you’re unlucky, it may be time to move over to another streaming platform like Apple Music or Spotify.

Artist Compensation: Artists aren’t paid well

In fairness, this is a problem that every streaming service has; even those with the highest payouts, like Tidal, still give the artist fractions of pennies per stream.

And that’s before the record label takes its cut, which is usually a majority.

On average, artists signed to big-name labels only see about 16% of their streaming revenue, making their earnings per stream a fraction of a fraction of a penny.

Amazon Music isn’t the worst offender, but it’s hardly the best either.

Amazon Music sits solidly between its competitors, Spotify and Apple Music in terms of artist compensation.

Spotify gives around $0.00318 per stream, Amazon Music about $0.00402, and Apple Music roughly $0.008 per stream, and all of these statistics are before the record label’s cut.

The best solution here is to go slightly more old-school and support your favorite artists by buying their albums. 

General Pros and Cons of Amazon Music:

Pros

• Amazon Prime members get access to Amazon Music at no additional cost.
• Amazon Music Unlimited is comparatively affordable at $8.99 per month.
• Amazon Music pays its artists slightly better than Spotify.
• Amazon Music, being an Amazon product, has excellent integration with Alexa.
• The Amazon Music application interface makes it easy to discover music you’ll love.
• Amazon Music Unlimited has one of the best scrolling lyric views of any music streaming service.

Cons

• Frequent Streaming Issues (Infinite “Loading”)
• The application will freeze up at random, more likely the longer it is left idle.
• Amazon Prime members get very limited access and can only play in shuffle mode.
• The application can be buggy and play incorrect songs or display incorrect search results.
• The application may crash at random.
• Amazon Music, like most streaming platforms, does not compensate its artists fairly.

Sources

Issues Streaming Amazon Music

Prime Members Complain Amazon Music is ‘Unusable’

Streaming Payouts Per Platform