Assuming the correction above is correct, here's another: "Amazon has decided against matching Spotify’s free tier " Wrong. I listen to Amz for free every night. It goes like this :-
"Alexa - play me 'Blue in Green' by Miles Davis."
Alexa then gives a lecture on not playing specific tracks unless one has a sub and makes an offer, which I decline " ....but here's a station [ Station?] similar to 'Blue In Green' by Miles Davis' "
And up will come 'Freddie Freeloader' ! I kid you not. That is what happened a few nights ago. The irony was not lost on me. It was followed by almost all the rest of 'Kind of Blue', without me asking.
The other night I asked for 'Mama Roux' by Dr John. Alexa claimed not to know this track, so I asked for 'I WalK On Gilded Splinters' instead. I got the lecture about the sub and would I like to sign up - family m/ship £14.99 - no mention of the single device £3.99 sub. Naturally I declined this so she offered to play 'something similar' which happened to be ..... 'Mama Roux'!
I find that the track she refused to play first off will come up two or three tracks into the free playlist that follows the "... here's a station similar to .." spiel. The trick is to ask for a track that you don't necessarily want to hear at that moment but is tightly aligned to the category/theme/playlist of what you do want to hear. So you may not want to hear 'Girl From Ipanema' [done to death by Jazz FM during their station pre-launch testing at the time of the death of Princess Diana] But up will come 'Desafinado', the track one did want to hear. A playlist of bossa/Stan Getz will follow.
And this, every night, for free. If something comes up which you really can't be doing with, you shut Alexa up and start again. Of course, you're in the hands of the Amz library structure but you are not going to get 'Hey Joe' by Jimi followed by 'When The Saints Go Marching In' by Louis Armstrong.
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