Amazon Music Unlimited isn’t actually growing faster than Spotify

Critics are taking issue with the claim that Amazon Music Unlimited is growing faster than Spotify. Music Business Worldwide has determined that Amazon grew more percentage-wise (70 percent year-over-year versus Spotify's 32 percent), but it was wel...

Amazon Prime Day adds a July 10th concert headlined by Taylor Swift

Everyone from Walmart to Target to eBay is coming for Amazon's ecommerce crown, and now its Christmas-in-July shopping event is adding yet another wrinkle: a concert. Leading up to to the two-day Prime Day 2019 on July 15th and 16th, Amazon Music wil...

Amazon Prime Music Updated with Stations on iOS


Amazon’s music streaming service—Prime Music—getting a nifty update on iOS. The update allows Apple users to enjoy ad-free songs, albums, and playlists. The update also brings Amazon’s Prime Stations...

Amazon Prime Music Updated with Stations on iOS


Amazon’s music streaming service—Prime Music—getting a nifty update on iOS. The update allows Apple users to enjoy ad-free songs, albums, and playlists. The update also brings Amazon’s Prime Stations...

Amazon Echo Smart Bluetooth Speaker Makes Waves in Your Living Room

Amazon Echo

Bluetooth speakers already come in all shapes and sizes, so what could make Amazon Echo so special? Maybe the fact that it is the e-tailer’s answer to Apple’s Siri, in a living room-friendly format.

Much like Microsoft’s Xbox One, the Amazon Echo Bluetooth speaker is always on. A device that’s always listening in doesn’t sound like a very good idea, but much like the Redmond tech giant’s gaming console, it is activated using a word, or in this case, a name: Alexa. I would’ve went with Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, as… you know, there are people whose name is Alexa, and if one of them visited you, confusion would ensue.

The e-tailer’s latest product doesn’t really have an equivalent in the tech world, so I might as well call this a premiere. Echo is a virtual assistant, much like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, or Google Now. Unlike those, it doesn’t live in your smartphone or tablet, but in your living room. Once it’s activated, it listens to your commands, and the options are quite variate. Since it features 7 microphones and noise-cancellation technologies, it can filter sound and recognize your commands no matter where in the room you are located.

Amazon’s virtual assistant can play music from Amazon Music Library, Prime Music, TuneIn and iHeartRadio. However, that’s only the beginning, as it can also tell you the weather forecast, the latest news, and it can answer simple queries using Wikipedia as its source of information. The free encyclopedia may not be the most accurate source of information in the world, but it’s good starting point.

Echo also comes with a companion app, which is available for Fire OS and Android. It’s funny how Google makes apps for iOS, but Apple doesn’t get any love from Amazon. In the big picture, Amazon Echo could represent a major step forward for manufacturers of smart home devices, provided that the e-tailer is open to work on interconnectivity. There are many ways this could be improved, and let’s just hope it does not share Fire Phone’s short life and miserable fate.

At $199, Echo isn’t exactly cheap, but the ones needing such a smart Bluetooth speaker won’t hesitate to pay this much. As with the Fire TV Stick, Amazon Prime subscribers will get Echo at a lower price, $99.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about Amazon’s $39 Fire TV Stick, or Amazon’s acquisition of Twitch.

Amazon Prime Members Stream Tens of Millions of Songs in First Week


Amazon has a very strong consumer base accumulated in their Prime service. It is rather easy for them to launch new services with huge success on to of Prime. Today Amazon revealed usage statistics...

Amazon Launches Fire Phone, Ignites the Smartphone Market

Amazon Fire Phone - 3D Effects

Here are some of the things that make Amazon’s Fire Phone a unique beast among the thousands of smartphones available on today’s market.

The Seattle-based e-tailer had to implement some unique features into the Fire Phone, in order to ensure its success and survival on the market. Below are some of the aspects that should increase people’s appeal for the Amazon Fire Phone over the competitors’ offers.

At the event hosted by Amazon at Fremont Studios in Seattle, Jeff Bezos made sure that everyone understands that the Firefly app is the feature that’s placed center-stage. As always, it’s not the hardware that’s the most important for Amazon, but the software ecosystem that it creates, and the integration of Amazon services so that they perfectly complement the hardware.

Firefly is the equivalent of Shazam for everything Amazon-related. It can identify songs, and then take you to the Amazon page belonging to the album, but it goes way beyond that. Once you point the camera at a phone number or a bar code, Firefly detects it and lets you interact with it accordingly.

More than that, it can detect movies and TV shows, so if you like it, you could think of it as Shazam for video content.

Luckily, if you happen to be in a hurry, you don’t need to unlock the screen and go through the app drawer to launch Firefly. Amazon gave that some thought and added a Firefly button to the Fire Phone. In other words, it takes just one second to access more than 100 million items from the e-tailer’s website.

In case you need help while using the Fire Phone, you are encouraged to launch the Mayday app that will get you in touch with a customer support representative right away. Now that’s what I call a company that cares about its clients!

Of course, the 3D effects are also important, as they’re done in a unique way. The four cameras that adorn the corners of the 4.7″ display detect the position of your head and eyes, and adjust the displayed content accordingly, so that it seems 3D at all times.

Fire Phone users will also get one year of Amazon Prime at no additional cost. That means that they can access Prime Music, Prime Instant Video, and Kindle books a lot faster than typical Amazon customers.

The e-tailer sweetened the deal even more by offering unlimited photo storage in the Amazon cloud drive. If you like shooting a lot of photos, this will definitely be up your alley.

The Fire Phone will be available on July 25 on AT&T exclusively, at least for the time being. The 32GB version will cost $200, while the 64GB one will be $300, both of them with two-year contracts. That being said, would you consider buying one?

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the first rumors about Amazon’s phone and the six cameras that the Amazon phone comes with.

Amazon Prime Music Launches


A few hours after the New York Times reported that Amazon's long-rumored music streaming service is expected to be announced on Thursday this week, Amazon quietly launched the service today.The...