I'd like to print My Music as a list of songs I can ask Alexa for. How?

[lennon2]

I'd like to be able to select just the text from songs/albums/playlists at music.amazon.com so I can print it out and keep it by the couch so we can browse it and ask Alexa to play something from it. There's too much there to remember, and having to browse it on the PC defeats the point of Alexa.

Any attempt to select text just selects the sidebar info. How can I output just a list of what I have there?

[renegade600]

if browsing by computer defeats the purpose of alexa, then having a printed copy does too.   use your tablet or phone to search or you can start doing screen prints.  that is about the only way I can think of without doing a google search. 

[lennon2]

Hi, I suspect I wasn't clear, because I can't imagine a google search that would generate a list of My Music in Amazon Music.
 
I don't have a tablet or phone, and screen prints show only what's visible in the window at any time, and not in text list form (album covers take up a lot of screen real estate.)  We do the same thing, for instance, with the player roster of our favorite NFL team so we know the players by their numbers, but I accumulated many CDs over my years as an Amazon customer before Alexa than there are player!  The point of a printed copy is that the family can see all these.

I simply want a way to scrape this database output. Surely others want this too!

[DParker]

I don't have a tablet or phone...

Don't take this the wrong way, but the idea of owning something as leading edge (consumer electronics-wise) as an Alexa-enabled device and NOT having a mobile device like a tablet or even a smart phone doesn't seem want to compute for me.

[lennon2]

I do wish someone would simply address my request, but I will explain my personal choices.

I had a little Mac in the mid-'80s and, in 1989, I bought a used IBM XT with a 30-meg hard drive and a 1200- or 2400-baud modem. I ran a dial-up BBS in the early 1990s, hosting several hundred other BBSes getting the Fidonet feed from Planet Connect using a 5-foot KU dish on my roof. In the '00s, I was a Movable Type blog software blogger and developer, and a news site Web producer. I am retired now and tired of technology, with severe upgrade fatigue.

I hate the interruption of phones and, no longer working, have no need for one beyond our landline. A tablet  seems like a cripppled PC to me, and hard to type on. Again, I have no need for anything portable.

I just want to listen to music, cook, read and play with my spouse and cats now. And I want a printout of my music so I can do all that without getting off the couch.

[DParker]

I'm sorry, but that's just not a print-friendly web site, and the whole feature is really geared toward users who at least have one or more mobile devices.

[lennon2]

I'm sorry, but that's just not a print-friendly web site, and the whole feature is really geared toward users who at least have one or more mobile devices.

I don't understand what the hardware has to do with it: I have purchased hundreds of albums and several thousand songs since my first Amazon purchase in 1998. Browsing them in a phone window would be a nightmare too, I expect. 

This is simply a display issue: Amazon could offer a "list view" easily enough, one that could be selected or scraped. There have always been workarounds for data presentation.  I would expect some clever person here to know one, or to be connected enough to Amazon to encourage them to offer this as an option as one's purchased music library grows.

(I did try to ask about it on the site, but just got a "Thank you for your feedback" autoreply.)

[DParker]

I don't understand what the hardware has to do with it: I have purchased hundreds of albums and several thousand songs since my first Amazon purchase in 1998. Browsing them in a phone window would be a nightmare too, I expect.

No more so than combing over tens (or more) of pages of paper.  And I have yet to find a printer that can produce searchable print.

[lennon2]

I can scan printed pages very quickly, especially when their content is alphabetized. And of course the family wouldn't have access to my phone, if I had one, to scan titles.

I'm surprised at the resistance to finding a solution here. Sorry no one is interested. Perhaps I should take the problem to Stack Exchange or the Amazon developer forums instead.

p.s. Your emphasis on portable devices is amusing given that Echo itself is not portable.

[DParker]

I'm surprised at the resistance to finding a solution here. Sorry no one is interested.

There is no resistance to finding a solution here.  The problem is that the specific solution you want is not readily available.  The only resistance here is your resistance to using current technology in the way it's designed to be used.

p.s. Your emphasis on portable devices is amusing given that Echo itself is not portable.

You misunderstand.  My emphasis on portable devices is based on the fact that the manufacturer designed the products in question such that their use is facilitated via the use of mobile devices.  Hence the apps they have developed for that purpose.  PCs are also an option, albeit a significantly less convenient one.  The fact that the Echo is not portable (though even that is not strictly the case anymore given the availability of battery units for it) is utterly irrelevant in terms of the role mobile devices are intended to play with regard to it.

[lennon2]

The only resistance here is your resistance to using current technology in the way it's designed to be used.

That, sir, used to be called innovation, and I built a career on doing it!

For the life of me, I can't imagine that browsing thousands of songs on a tiny phone screen is the way anything is designed to be used. The human eye has a broader, faster sweep than that.

[DParker]

That, sir, used to be called innovation, and I built a career on doing it!

Eschewing current technology in favor of one that's nearly 80 years old is your idea of "innovation"?

For the life of me, I can't imagine that browsing thousands of songs on a tiny phone screen is the way anything is designed to be used. The human eye has a broader, faster sweep than that.

When that screen allows you to navigate those thousands of songs in multiple ways (subgroups by the first letter of the title, artist, album, etc), a search function et al it should be quite easy to imagine that such an interface is how your library is intended to be browsed.

But given your assessment of tablets as nothing more than "crippled PCs" I'm not surprised by your approach to this.

[lennon2]

Technology ought to serve the needs of its users.

I have stated my family's needs and you are telling me to have different needs: I should want to navigate alphabetically to what I do not know I want using a tiny screen that would display only a few of the thousands at a time and might be in one member's pocket which might be at the market when it's needed.

When everyone has tens of thousands of songs the problem may make more sense to you. No hard feelings, but I'm moving on from here.

[mike27oct]

It's not a resistance to help you, it's that there is no easy way to do what you want to do since the Amazon music service is not designed to do what you want.  Also, your comments about smartphone and tablets is way off base, but more about that later.  Let's see if I can help you get the printing done.

Using the PC browser, go into your Amazon account and locate your My Music Library.  Mine is quite small since I have rarely downloaded music from Amazon (I have an alternative service called eMusic I mostly download from).  Plus, I have digitized many of my CDs and some LPs.  Some of this has been uploaded to Amazon into a free 250 song playlist. 

Look at the menu on the left side of My Music.  Notice My Playlists (If you don't have any you can create them -- one playlist could likely be your entire Amazon library.)  I look in my free playlist and all the songs (NOT albums) are shown there with thumbnails and titles (NOT printer friendly).  I can click on a song and play it on the PC.

What you see is one reason that makes printing this stuff practically impossible.  For further help in printing this stuff I suggest you give Echo Customer Support a call (from your landline) at 1-877-375-9365.  Ask them!

Playing my own digital music is a lot easier, on both home equipment and mobile devices.  Today, all my digital music (which is organized nicely by iTunes program) is stored on a WD NAS server.  Any device, program or app that can access this server (and I have many) either from home or remotely can find exactly what I want, but I usually don't go to the time and trouble of selecting something specific.  I make 100-track random playlists that can play songs one after the other for hours -- it's all my music, so I really don't care what song plays when.

To close, I want respond to this comment of yours:

>>>  I hate the interruption of phones and, no longer working, have no need for one beyond our landline. A tablet  seems like a cripppled PC to me, and hard to type on. Again, I have no need for anything portable.

I just want to listen to music, cook, read and play with my spouse and cats now. And I want a printout of my music so I can do all that without getting off the couch.

I hate phone interruptions, too, and that is why hardly anyone has my cell smartphone number for all the years I have had one.  Most people only have my home landline.  I am retired as well, and I would bet that I am much older than you, but unlike most senior citizens, I am not a Ludite and have kept up with technology, because it makes my life more fun, educational, and productive.  Tablets are a great invention. and I have an iPad and two Amazon Fire tablets.  I mostly use them to enjoy video and music media I have stored on server as well as I can stream from services, and definitely not to "type on".  I never travel with a laptop any more; just an iPhone and an iPad and maybe a wireless hard drive or flash drive -- oh yea, and a Dot.  If you only knew what all can be done with a tablet you would not make such an un-informed and negative comment about tablets.  When I need a PC I have two modern Windows laptops in operation.  Not to mention too many Alexa devices already!  I could go on, but it would be like spitting into the wind.

[mike27oct]

Oh no, has the OP left; after I took the time to respond to him?  Whatever, I let Parker chat with him too long!