Listen to Amazon Prime Music on your mobile device

Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

Earlier today, Amazon took the wraps off Prime Music, a new streaming service for Amazon Prime subscribers. With it you can listen to a library of over one million songs, all commercial-free, on anything from your PC to your Roku box to your smartphone or tablet.

Let's take a look at how the service works on such a mobile device -- and, perhaps most importantly, how you can download Prime tunes for offline listening.

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For starters, it goes without saying that you'll need an Amazon Prime subscription. From there you'll need the Amazon Music mobile app for your device. On Android, this was previously known as Amazon MP3, while iOS users knew it as Amazon Cloud Player. If you already have either of these apps installed, hit your app store and grab the update.

Now launch the app. If you're not already signed into your account, you'll need to do so. By default, you should end up in the Prime Music view, where you'll see a choice of songs, albums, or playlists to browse. This should all be pretty familiar to anyone who's used a music app before.

Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

However, there are a few subtle differences between the Android and iOS versions, at least when it comes to browsing. In Android, if you want to listen to any song, album, or playlist, you must first add it to your library -- otherwise you get to hear only a sample. In iOS, you can listen more or less on-demand, adding songs to your library only if you want to.

Another oddity: When you use the Search tool in Prime Music for iOS, you get only Prime Music results. But the Android version searches across all of Amazon's Music store, showing Prime results first and then non-Prime stuff.

(I should pause here to note that both apps have been flaky all day, possibly owing to heavy traffic corresponding to Amazon's launch. It's possible one or both of these issues will vanish at some point.)

Prime Music lets you download tracks for offline listening, a handy option if you don't want to burn through your data plan while on the go -- or you're stuck somewhere without Internet access.

This isn't the most intuitive process, though. For starters, you must add a song, album, or playlist to your library before you can download it. From there, the easiest option is to tap the Menu button (top-left corner), then choose Recently Added. You'll see all the latest additions to your library, along with a download button that will save them to local storage.

Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

Android users: To download a single track, tap and hold it, and then tap Download. If you want an individual album, your best bet is to tap Menu, Albums, and search for the album you want (again, it must be part of your library), then tap the Download button to retrieve it.

Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

iOS users: To download a single track, swipe left, then tap Download. If you want an individual album, tap Menu, Albums, and search for the album you want (again, it must be part of your library), then tap the Download button to retrieve it.

For one-stop access to all your download tracks, tap Menu, then Recently Downloaded. (The apps could definitely use a "downloaded" view for all offline songs, not just the recent ones.)

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Get an Amazon Fire TV and Kindle HDX for $249

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Calling all last-minute Fathers' Day shoppers! Amazon has so got you covered.

For a limited time, Amazon is offering the Fire TV streaming media player and Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch tablet for $249, shipped. (Plan on spending extra if you want it shipped overnight.) That's $79 less than what you'd pay for these two goodies separately.

The Kindle Fire HDX is my single favorite 7-inch tablet to date. This is the 16GB model with Special Offers, and although it would be nice if it had more storage, there are a few Wi-Fi media drives (such as Kingston's Wi-Drive) that are Fire-compatible. Plus, with Amazon's heavy reliance on cloud integration, local storage is, I think, less of an issue.

As for the Fire TV, it didn't exactly set the world on...well, you know, but as media streamers go, it's pretty sweet. And updates coming later this year will add expanded voice-search results, and better still, HBO Go.

Of course, if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber (and you should be, especially with the just-announced addition of Prime Music), you can already stream tons of older HBO content.

The Fire TV also comes with a $15 Amazon Instant Video credit, so you can splurge on a couple of movie rentals or the like. (Note: This isn't explicitly mentioned on the bundle page, but it is on the Fire TV page -- and I see no reason why it wouldn't apply here. I've looked through the terms and conditions; there's nothing to suggest a bundled Fire TV doesn't come with that credit.)

For what it's worth, if you're interested in only one device or the other, you could probably "flip" the unwanted one for close to full price. Sell the Fire TV for, say, $90, and your net cost on the Fire HDX is $159 -- an outright steal. Thoughts?

Bonus deal: How about some portable power to go with that Kindle (or your smartphone or any other mobile device)? Also at Amazon, you can score a RAVPower 5,600mAh mobile charger for $16.49, shipped, when you apply coupon code 3JDJS6HW at checkout. This compact battery pack has an auto-off feature and a built-in flashlight.

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Amazon Prime Music is cool, but for now I'll stick with Spotify

Amazon Prime Music offers streaming of over 1 million tracks. Video screenshot by Eric Mack/CNET

Amazon Prime is sort of like the digital culture equivalent of those discount subscription programs that travel and credit companies offer to lure you in -- they're only awesome if you actually use them.

Because I live in a small, rural town, free of almost any big-box stores, the cost of Prime is easily justifiable for the shipping discounts alone, and occasionally I'll stream an episode of "Orphan Black" or something else from the Prime free video streaming collection. Maybe once a year I utilize the free Kindle lending library feature that's also included in Prime.

So I was excited to learn Thursday morning that Amazon Prime had gained music streaming similar to what Spotify offers. I've been handing Spotify 10 bucks a month for the past few years, but would happily keep that money and relinquish control of my daily streaming habit to Amazon if it could offer all that Spotify does.

Sadly, Amazon Prime Music as it exists on day one couldn't replace Spotify in my life for even a single hour, let alone an entire month.

Within about two minutes of opening up the updated Amazon Music Android app with Prime Music enabled, it became pretty obvious that Amazon is not selling exactly the same thing as Spotify, which shouldn't be surprising. While Spotify and its competitors are true streaming subscription services, Amazon has always used its Prime offerings the same way that grocers use samples of onion dip and new coffee varieties to entice you to actually buy something; Here, watch the entire first season of "Orphan Black" for free, loyal customer -- because we love you and we know you'll then want to pay us to watch season two.

Likewise, while Amazon offers over 20 million songs for purchase as downloadable MP3s, it's only making somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent of those tracks available for free streaming to Prime customers. On just about every screen while trying to soak up my benefits as a Prime member, I'm reminded that I can purchase all kinds of tracks from Amazon for $.99 or $1.29 each.

Spotify, on the other hand, offers 20 million songs for ad-free streaming and download to play offline anytime, so long as you pay the monthly subscription fee. Or you can stream for free with ads.

So Prime Music streaming doesn't add much value to my life. The extra 19 million tracks I can stream and download to play offline with Spotify easily make it worth the 10 bucks a month. In addition, the offline listening capability of Prime music was wonky for me at best on my Android phone, but I think we can probably chalk this up to launch difficulties, as my colleague Rick Broida was able to get offline listening working right away on his iPhone.

I also found Amazon's collection of playlists and recommendations to be surprisingly thin, especially given how strong the use of recommendations is elsewhere in the Amazon universe. Over the past few years, Spotify has managed to create quite a robust system for music discovery, social sharing, playlists and even the integration of apps like Last.fm. That's made it my home base for anything with a melody since... well, since I stopped buying MP3s from Amazon.

It seems to me that if Amazon wanted to, they have the capability to outdo Spotify in all the areas where it remains strong: music library, recommendations and discovery, and platform and social sharing. But if it did, it may as well stop selling MP3s altogether.

If enough people move from MP3 purchases to streaming, perhaps that's what Amazon will do one day, and perhaps Prime Music is the prep work for that day.

Until then, Prime Music will likely remain another part of my Prime subscription that I use rarely, if at all. In fact, while I started out listening to a Prime playlist as I wrote this, I quickly tired of its limitations and switched over to Spotify around the third paragraph to listen to a playlist of this week's new releases to get me through to this sentence.

So, in closing, I recommend the new album by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, unless you're using Prime Music, where you'll get redirected to the Amazon store to pay for the MP3 album.

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Listen to Amazon Prime Music on your mobile device

Amazon's new music-streaming service has arrived. Here's how to take it with you on Android and iOS, complete with offline listening.

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Get an Amazon Fire TV and Kindle HDX for $249

That's $79 less than you'd pay for these two items separately. Oh, yeah, and it comes with a $15 Instant Video credit, too.

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Amazon Prime Music is cool, but for now I'll stick with Spotify

Commentary: Amazon has launched its own music streaming service, but Crave's Eric Mack finds it doesn't quite stack up to Spotify, at least not yet.

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Amazon sets up first original kids' shows for summer

"Tumble Leaf" Amazon/Screenshot by Joan E. Solsman/CNET

Amazon Studios, the Hollywood arm of the e-commerce giant, will roll out its first three original children's television shows just as kids get a lot more TV time -- one series per month this summer, starting next week.

Amazon's original series push follows the lead of the bigger subscription-streaming-video rival to Amazon Prime, Netflix, which has made a name for itself developing buzzed-about shows like "House of Cards" and "Orange Is the New Black." Amazon Prime's tack has differed in a few ways, including a greater emphasis on children's programming, one of the top categories of shows that make a customer "sticky," or less likely to cancel.

Last year, Amazon scooped up a trove of Nickelodeon kids content when Netflix passed on renewing its licensing deal with Viacom, and Amazon has been developing nearly as many kids-focused originals as those aimed at adults. The kids' bent may stem from the top: Roy Price, director of Amazon Studios, previously worked in children's programming at Disney, where he developed shows like "Kim Possible." (For its part, Netflix has premiered one original kids' show -- "Turbo: F.A.S.T." -- and has a pipeline of other Dreamworks programs on the way.)

On Amazon Prime, which costs $99 a year for free second-day shipping as well as a catalog of unlimited video streaming, the first six episodes of each new kids' show will premiere this summer, starting with preschool animated series "Tumble Leaf" on May 23, followed by another preschool program "Creative Galaxy" on June 27, and live-action series "Annedroids" on July 25 for kids aged 4 to 7. Additional episodes of the shows will follow later this year.

The company has two more kids programs in the process of becoming full series, "Wishenpoof!" and "Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street."

Amazon shares closed Wednesday at $297.62 and were up 31 cents, or less than a percentage point, in light premarket trading.

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