Amazon Music Changes Lead to Empty Amazon Prime Music Libraries and Playlists

Amazon Music Changes Lead to Empty Amazon Prime Music Libraries and Playlists
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Is your Amazon Prime Music library missing music and playlists that you paid for? Here’s why, straight from an Amazon Music customer service representative. You see the Amazon Music changes that you are seeing are Amazon ransoming your purchased music: if you ever want to see it again, you have to sign up for Amazon Music Unlimited, Amazon’s paid music streaming service.

Hard as it may be to believe, it actually happened to one of our team members – let’s call them Lindsey – who captured the entire experience, and the information given to them by the Amazon Music customer service representative, so that we could give it to you straight.

Now, Lindsey has purchased, on Amazon, over 300 songs in digital form which were stored in her Amazon Music library, and assigned to various playlists which she’s had for years. One day earlier this week she had gone to Amazon Music on her computer, intending to start playing one of her playlists. After loading it up (and noting with satisfaction all of the great music that was there), another task caught her attention, so she had to delay starting her music. When she got back to her Amazon Music window she found her Amazon Music library empty. Completely empty. With the taunting message “You have not purchased any songs yet.” Like hell she hadn’t!

Amazon Music Changes Lead to Empty Amazon Prime Music Libraries and Playlists

Perplexed, she then tried various browsers, the Amazon Music desktop app, and even the Amazon Music mobile app, all with the same result. Remember, she had purchasedpaid for – more than 300 songs, and those too were simply gone from her library.

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This is when Lindsey reached out to Amazon Music customer service. And here’s what they said:

Lindsey: “All of my music is missing, even music that I paid for. My library is completely empty, I’ve tried everything, different browsers, both apps, everything is gone.”

[Lindsey verifies account for the representative, is walked through the paces, confirms Prime membership, etc..]

Amazon Music customer service rep: “I’m sorry due to recent update made on Amazon Prime music UI changes, that’s the reason you’re unable to access your library songs. Prime members can shuffle play any artist, album, or playlist from our expanded music catalog and discover new music based on your likes. Prime members can only pick and play songs from a curated selection of All-Access Playlists, on-demand with no skip limits, or download them to listen offline. Music from other playlists, artists or albums apart from “All-Access Playlists” will play in shuffle mode, where customers will get a mix of the requested music and other similar music. If you would like to listen to selected certain songs/ unlimited songs from Amazon Music app, you need to upgrade Amazon Music individual plan subscription.”

Lindsey: “Wait. No. Wait. So you are saying that suddenly Amazon changed it so that all of my playlists have disappeared?? Without warning?? Including songs that I have paid for??”

Amazon Music customer servicee rep: “My sincere apologize for this inconvenience, Lindsey. Since it’s a recent Prime music changes, it’s happened.”

Outraged, and really doubting that was the issue (Lindsey says she thought it must be some sort of connection issue, such as Amazon’s music servers rejecting or not recognizing the connection from Lindsey’s devices), Lindsey signed up for Amazon Music Unlimited to see what would happen, and low and behold:

Amazon Music library

All 334 songs that Lindsey had purchased magically reappeared in her Amazon Music library (now actually her Amazon Music Unlimited library).

Still in disbelief that Amazon had really pulled this, was really essentially holding music for which Lindsey had already paid for ransom, forcing Lindsey to pay an additional monthly fee just to access music for which Lindsey had already paid, she then went to see what would happen if she cancelled the Amazon Music Unlimited subscription. Here’s what happened:

Amazon Music Unlimited are you sure

This seems to be hitting people at different times, or some not at all, suggesting that Amazon is rolling this out over time, and sporadically.

In the meantime, here’s one thing that you can do if you get hit with this: Sign up for Amazon Music Unlimited in order to get your library back. Then download all of your purchased songs onto your computer.

How to Download All of Your Purchased Music from Amazon

If you don’t already have it, download the Amazon Music Desktop Player for PC and Mac, and log into your account.

In your library go to the ‘Songs’ listing, and then select ‘Purchased’.

Click on the 3 dots next to a song and select ‘Download’.

You have to do this one song at a time, so here’s a trick: go to your Playlists and click on the 3 dots on a playlist and select ‘Download’. It will download all the songs in your playlist that you have purchased. Do that for all of your playlists. Then go back to the ‘Songs > Purchased’ listing; any of the songs downloaded already will have a check mark next to them, so all you have to do is download any remaining songs that didn’t get downloaded via the playlist download.

Once you have downloaded all of your purchased songs, if you can make do playing them from your computer instead of streaming them through Amazon, cancel the Amazon Music Unlimited subscription.

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One thought on “Amazon Music Changes Lead to Empty Amazon Prime Music Libraries and Playlists

  1. This happened to me too, and I have/had way more than 300 purchased songs. It’s total thievery on the part of Amazon. Thank you for the article and clarification.

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