Amazon Music now has an app for Apple TV. Here’s how to use it

By Simon Cohen Published October 17, 2019

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Listening to music on your TV? Why not? According to a recent survey by YouGov, more than 40% of people who own a smart TV want to use it to listen to music. Perhaps that’s in part why Amazon chose to launch its first music app for Apple TV.

Starting Thursday, October 10, you can download the Amazon Music app from the App Store for Apple TV — it’s compatible with Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD running tvOS 12.0 and later. If you live in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Mexico, Japan, or India, all you need is a Prime Music or an Amazon Music Unlimited account to start streaming.

Recommended Videos

Once the app is downloaded, you need to activate your Apple TV as a recognized device with Amazon. On launching the app, it will display a six-letter pairing code. Using a browser on another device, go to https://amazon.com/code and enter that code when asked. You’re all done.

The Amazon Music app will give you access to the full library of millions of songs, plus albums, artists, and playlists. You can also play content from your My Music personal library. But perhaps the best feature, given that this on a TV, of course, is the scrolling lyrics option — perfect for an impromptu karaoke session, or just practicing for the next time your friends come over.

Unfortunately, subscribers to Amazon’s new Amazon Music HD tier of service won’t be able to stream the CD and hi-res versions that they’re entitled to. At the moment, the Apple TV app doesn’t support either of these higher-quality formats. Instead, you’ll be offered the same catalog as Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers.

The pairing of Amazon Music and Apple TV seems a bit odd, especially when you consider that there’s no Alexa option on Apple’s media streamer. Apple is beginning to open up Siri to third-party music services like Spotify, but even then, it hasn’t rolled out that feature on its HomePod speaker — just iPhones and iPads for now.

Will Siri eventually be able to start Amazon Music playback on the Apple TV? We’re guessing that will happen eventually. In the meantime, Amazon seems content to just make its music service available on more devices. “We believe that listeners should be able to stream music simply and easily on any device they choose,” Karolina Joynathsing, director of business development for Amazon Music, said in a press release.

Former Contributing Editor, A/V

Simon Cohen obsesses over the latest wireless headphones, earbuds, soundbars, and all manner of related devices and…

Topics

Audio / Video

Proton reveals how smart TVs track you and the escape situation is pretty grim

Modern smart TVs fingerprint your screen content at the chipset level.

Google TV applications on the Sony A95K TV.

Your smart TV may know far more about your viewing habits than you realize, even if you rarely use its smart features. In a new privacy explainer, Proton warns that many modern TVs quietly collect data about everything displayed on the screen and share it with manufacturers, advertisers, and analytics companies.

The worrying part is that escaping this tracking is becoming increasingly difficult because many privacy controls are buried deep in settings or enabled by default. Proton argues that buying a smart TV today often means accepting a level of surveillance that most people never knowingly signed up for.

Audio / Video

LG is cracking down on smart TV apps that quietly turn your TV into a secret proxy

LG OLED Settings

If you own an LG smart TV, there's a chance one of your harmless-looking apps has been moonlighting as an internet relay for someone else's traffic. According to a report from KrebsOnSecurity, LG says it's finally stepping in to stop this menace. This week, the company confirmed it plans to suspend any webOS app that turns a TV into what's called a residential proxy node.

The move follows a report from security firm Spur, which found that more than 42 percent of apps on LG's webOS store include SDKs that quietly reroute internet traffic through your TV, indefinitely. Samsung isn't spared either, with over a quarter of Tizen apps carrying similar code.

Audio / Video

The LG C6 OLED is great out of the box. These settings make it even better.

From Filmmaker Mode to shadow detail and AI Sound Pro, these are the settings that made the biggest difference after a month of testing the LG C6 OLED.

LG OLED Settings

The LG C6 OLED is one of the best mid-range OLED TVs you can buy right now. After spending the past month testing and using it every day, one thing became clear: straight out of the box, you're leaving picture quality on the table.

The good news is that getting more out of the TV doesn't require professional calibration or hours spent digging through menus. A handful of small adjustments can make movies look more cinematic, improve shadow detail, smooth out motion and even make the built-in speakers sound noticeably better. Here are the exact settings I've been using after living with the LG C6.