Why Doesn’t the Kindle Play Music?

  By Tac Anderson | July 29, 2010 - 8:56 am | New

The End of Books? Amazon is announcing a new, better, lighter, cheaper Kindle.  With the new version of the Kindle, I’m finally ready to break down and buy one. but something struck me as odd. Why doesn’t the Kindle play music, or any audio for that fact?

Amazon sells Audio Books Amazon has a great MP3 Music Download Store.

I know the E-Ink technology won’t support it but they even have a Video On Demand store that competes with Netflix, Hulu Plus and iTunes.

But to me, music seems like a no brainer. When I read a book I listen to music. Always. I almost can’t read a book unless I’m listening to music. Plus there’s the whole audio book cross over.

The Kindle already has Text-to-Speech reading capability how much harder would adding a music player be?

I realize that this becomes a slippery slope that effects the purity of the single function device but I’ve already questioned the long term value of single function devices. Of course I’m finally ready to buy one so maybe single function devices still have some life left in them.

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Photo credit By Gobble Monster

Full disclosure, Amazon is a client.

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About Tac Anderson

Social media anthropologist. Communications strategist. Business model junkie. Chief blogger here at New Comm Biz.
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  • Ncook

    I thought it did play music.

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

    I can't find anything saying that it does. And I actually fact checked multiple sources. I hope I'm wrong.

  • Kevin

    My V1 Kindle plays music. Just have to drop it on the SD card. It's called an 'experimental feature', but works. No control over playlist though.

  • Ncook

    From the user guide chapter 3.8:

    Background Audio
    To play background audio (MP3 files) that you have transferred to your Kindle, follow the steps below:
    1.If you are not already on the Home screen, press the Home button.
    2.Press the Menu button.
    3.Use the 5-way to navigate down until “Experimental” is underlined and press the 5-way to select it.
    4.Use the 5-way to navigate down until “play music” is underlined and press down to select it.
    The songs are played in order, by the date you added them to your Kindle. You can adjust the volume of the music using the volume controls on the bottom of your Kindle. You can continue to listen to the audio while reading content; the background audio continues to play unless you open an audio book, turn on text-to-speech, all of the files have been played, or if you stop the playback as indicated below.

  • http://www.catalangarden.com/kindle-3-kindle-3g-and-wifi.html Dave

    I am pretty sure that you can, although I haven’t really felt the need. Does everything have to be so multi-functional?