A curious thing happened yesterday while perusing my Amazon Fire TV … scrolling thru the left-hand textual menu seemed more tedious than usual and, sure enough, several new items were present. A quick check to the (slightly re-ordered) settings confirmed the Fire TV had been updated (to 51.1.1). It appears the headliners are a kid-oriented FreeTime and native Amazon Music playback.
Of course, Amazon Cloudplayer was a bizarre and notable absence upon Amazon Fire TV launch and this update goes a long way towards filling the gap. Yet the Fire TV team clearly remains out of sync with other Amazon initiatives as the newly announced Amazon Prime Music service is MIA.
I took Music for a quick spin and it functions as you’d expect, with the ability to access previously purchased Amazon MP3 tracks and auto-ripped CDs. When browsing around the Fire TV home screen, music continues to play (with a cool little animated equalizer). Most impressive is our audio collections are accessible via remote voice search. Although, I must still enunciate poorly as Amazon was unable to find Than Halen.