Amazon rebrands Cloud Player with launch of Amazon Music 3 for mobile and desktop
Amazon has refreshed its entire collection of cloud music apps with the releases of Amazon Music for Windows 3.0, Amazon Music for Mac 3.0, Amazon Music for iPad and iPhone 3.0 and Amazon Music for Android 3.0.
All four platforms share similar updates, and accompany Amazon’s foray into music streaming with the launch of Amazon Prime Music, which initially is only available to US customers.
Amazon Prime Music is a new benefit for existing Amazon Prime users, giving them access to over a million streaming songs alongside TV, films and e-books. Compared to existing services like Spotify and Deezer, Amazon’s initial offering is tiny, both rivals claiming more than 30 million songs in their respective catalogs.
To coincide with this launch, Amazon has rebranded its Cloud Player family of apps as Amazon Music, adding support for Amazon Prime Music in US markets. All users continue to benefit from access to their cloud libraries -- which consist of MP3 purchases, auto-rip CDs purchased since 1998 and music uploaded from computer -- as well as device music.
Version 3 of each app boasts a facelift -- the overall layout remains the same, but the user interface has been refreshed to offer easier navigation. There’s also added support for library management direct from all versions of the app for the first time, allowing users to delete music from their library on mobile as well as desktop.
Despite this improvement, desktop users will find they still have to upload music from their local collection through the web browser -- open the menu and choose More > Import music into your library to do so.
Amazon Music for Windows 3.0 is available now as a freeware download for PCs running Windows XP SP3 or later, while Amazon Music for Mac 3.0 works on Macs running OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) or later. Amazon Music for iPad and iPhone 3.0 requires iOS 6.0 or later, while Amazon Music for Android 3.0 runs on Android 4.0 or upwards.