Playback problems with Amazon Prime Music

[anon(9072051)]

Music playback was smooth and enjoyable for the first two days. Unfortunately, that's no longer true. Now music from my Prime library cuts out randomly, sometimes for a few seconds, like what happens with some YouTube videos that stop to buffer during playback if you have a weak cable/wifi connection. [I don't have a weak cable/wifi connection myself.] A number of times the delay has gone on for so long that I just gave the "Alexa Stop" command and gave up.

There are a number of similar complaints on an Amazon help page, but so far no explanation of what's causing the problem. Someone from Amazon has posted a link to a contact page that gathers no specific information about your problem but merely asks for a phone number so that someone can call back. I really do not want to go that route. Customer service phone calls are almost universally frustrating experiencees.

Of course, I will eventually go the call-me-back route whenever I know that I'll be home for a long enough stretch to make the callback useful. Until then, though, if you don't own an Echo, know that the Echo is not without its bugs.

If, on the other hand, you do own an Echo and have a fix for this music problem, please share.

 

[anon(9072051)]

[UPDATE (and the reason why I'm loathe to call in to Customer Service)]:

I'm thinking that the problem is not with my unit itself but with Amazon's cloud services generally. Last night I asked Alexa to "play the album 'Galore' by the Cure, a "best of" collection that takes more than an hour to get through. After announcing what was about to play, the Echo cut in and out a few times (like a drunk DJ who couldn't drop a needle), but after that all 18 tracks played flawlessly and sounded great.

I don't think I've ever encountered buffering delays while watching Prime videos, but I can see how too many Echo owners making demands on Prime music at the same time could rebound into weird lag issues affecting playback for some or all of those Echo owners.

I'm interested to see how Amazon responds as more Echos find happy homes.

 

[KahneFan]

For some reason, at my house only, my Prime music on my phone will be choppy and/or sound like it's skipping. I stream at work with no issues (so far), only at home. When Prime is doing this, I will choose another streaming service and no issues. I don't know what is causing it, but now I'm worried my Echo may do the same.

 

[chandelier944]

I've used Amazon prime music on an iPod touch with no problems and also on an iPad with the same experience. However for whatever reason with my Android phone (v5.1.1) it skips all the time with my downloaded library. Music that wasn't downloaded from Amazon(meaning it shows up in the stock music app) plays flawlessly through the app, but everything
else skips at least once each song. I've tried clearing the cache and getting a RAM cleaner app but none of that has helped.

 

[rebecca broadhead]

I'm having the same issue just playing on my android. Some albums play fine and other keep skipping all the way through a part from with maybe one or 2 songs. I have all of them downloaded so can't be a buffering issue. Has anyway figured out how to sort this. Gone back to Spotify in the mean time