That worked!

 

I can confirm that both Tidal and Amazon MbUX apps suck. I tried both in search of an alternative for the missing Apple Music app, and ended up deleting them.
Spotify app, on the other and works very well, but the sound quality is not that impressive

 

I am right there with you. I deleted both Tidal and Amazon this morning.

 

I have been out of the country for most of this year so far, except for a few weeks in February. In the interim I was REALLY hoping that MB would get their **** together and fix the Apple Music with Dolby Atmos issues. As they did not make any progress visible to customers, I decided to finally pull the trigger on my fall-back position and signed up for the 3 month free trial of Amazon Music.

It is ABSYSMAL. Much worse than I even anticipated based on all the warnings and feedback posted in these forums. The app is so poorly designed and executed was to almost render in inoperable for any normal music playback functions. So many issues, here are a few:

1. As many others have noted, there is no resuming music where you left off after turning off the car. This is more than an irritant, it is a complete dealbreaker for scenic road trips where there are frequent stops and car shutoffs.
2. There is no list of upcoming songs
3. There is no list of the songs within a playlist so you cannot jump back to where you were manually and must restart at the first song in the playlist and skip to where you want. Most of my playlists are very long so this too is completely impractical.
4. There is no ability to search while driving
5. Hey Mercedes does not work with the app for hands free searching either
6. Because of the awful interface, there is no way to distinguish between a song and album with the same name. I tried several times to search for the Purple Rain album (knowing there was a dolby atmos version available) and it would only take me to the song and not the album. Once it started playing the song, which is the final one on the album, there was no ability to skip back to the beginning of the album even (not that this would be very practical).
7. If you switch over to Apple CarPlay for anything audio and then press back on the Amazon Music standalone app button, it consistently gives an error message about "maximum number of streams" so I have to start all over again as if I have just shut off the car.
8. I have not seen any indication on the MBUX center screen when a song in Dolby Atmos is playing from the Amazon Music app (I can see this when using playback in Amazon Music on my iPhone, so I know what to look for). I have verified that I have enabled Dolby Atmos and am playing a song in that format. In fact, it SOUNDS like it is playing back correctly in the immersive Dolby Atmos but it would be helpful to see this on the screen, particularly for songs and albums that have multiple versions (both Dolby Atmos and standard) in the library.

Moreover this entire experience with Mercedes dangling the carrot of superior sound and then without warning or explanation stripping it away and taking months to resolve (if they ever do) is completely unacceptable customer service for a car that cost nearly $100k after taxes. This is not a luxury experience at all. I would not accept this from a Chrysler, let alone a Mercedes Benz.

 

They should just hand over the UI to Apple (like Aston Martin did).

 

I am in favor of that. I'd give priority to purchasing a car that uses the full CarPlay interface including the driver display.

Car manufacturers want to own the interface. Instead, they should think of it this way: There's a limited amount of R&D money for each vehicle. Apple is spending a ton of R&D money on the music app (and other display interfaces) which car manufacturers can use for free. Then they can spend the R&D money on the mechanical aspects of the car that will give them a competitive advantage. Any car manufacturer thinking they are going to get a competitive advantage by making a better user interface on LCD displays than Apple is likely delusional.

 

Yep.

For #7 above, if you get the "maximum number of streams" message, just push the play button on the MBUX screen. (You have to press play twice. The first time, it will give you the error message. The second time, it will start playing.) This seems to tell Amazon that you want your single stream to play on the car. I thought I was getting this message due to setting up playlists on the phone app, but even when only using the MBUX app, I get the too many streams error.

For #8 above, The Amazon music app on the car will clearly show "Atmos" as well as the Dolby symbol when playing in Atmos. Try "Cantina Band" by John Williams & London Symphany Orchestra on the "Star Wars: A New Hope" Albumn. It should show "Atmos" on the playing screen. Have you enabled Atmos music on the Amazon Music app in MBUX?

For #3 and #2, when in a playlist, there is an icon on the top right of the play screen that will have the tracks in the playlist. You can skip to a song, by scrolling in the playlist and tapping the song that you want.

For #4, I can't type and search while driving. If there is a person in the passenger seat, I'll have them search in Amazon music to get Atmos. If I'm the only one in the front, I use voice commands to request non-Atmos music on Apple CarPlay.

For #5, If Mercedes fixes "Hey Mercedes" so it is better at voice recognition and can search within Amazon Music, it will be a big improvement. As is, it is more frustrating to try using "Hey Mercedes" to search than to just use Siri to search for non-spatial music.

 

Again, thanks for the tip!

My experience so far is that Amazon has more tracks in Atmos than Tidal does. If Tidal has a track in Atmos, then Amazon has the same track in Atmos. If Amazon has a track in Atmos, Tidal may or may not have the track in Atmos.

 

Sorry for delay. I didn’t get notified via email of your response. Thanks for these clarifications. Several of the complaints (no Dolby Atmos indicator, no song lists within playlists) were resolved when I signed out and back in again. Apparently the MBUX app needed that to recognize my unlimited subscription upgrade. I still detest the interface and find it mostly useless but will need to spend more time with it. Most of my road trip uses don’t get much practice just doing short city trips.

It seems that only a very small number of the songs and albums I have flagged as hearts (to add them to my library) show up within the MBUX app. The Apple Music app also wouldn’t show everything available on the phone version but Amazon Music allows for even less content. I think my primary workaround will be to just select an album and play the entire album and then have ready what my next couple of album choices will be rather than actually housing all that in a playlist as I like to do. This also doesn’t allow for large shuffles of the songs I have selected for inclusion in my library which is frustrating because many times only a small number of songs on an album have been upgraded to Dolby Atmos. I have been trying to manage my Amazon music library to only contain the songs that I have verified are in the Dolby Atmos format (since if they aren’t in that format I might as well just listen to them in standard definition using Apple Music in CarPlay). But this has proven to be impossible because for some reason after spending hours cleaning up my library on my iPhone, it doesn’t seem to be syncing across all devices. I get a different list on my iPad and a different list on the Mac desktop app and yet another different list in the MBUX app. It’s so ****ing frustrating.

 

Has anyone heard, seen, or have any sort of update? This Apple Music thing really is an issue for me. I have found both the Amazon and Tidal options unsatisfactory, so much so that I cancelled both paid options as to me the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

 

I'm glad to hear your update that logging out and logging back in to Amazon Music fixed the issue with the car app not recognizing your unlimited subscription. I'm also glad that you shared this tip here which may help other owners.

I am keeping Atmos playlists in Amazon and Tidal. Tidal asks me to login about 1/3 of the time I get in the car. When I'm getting in the car to go somewhere, I don't want to log on to a car app before departing. Tidal, in my experience, has less of an Atmos selection than Amazon. My plan at the moment is to use Amazon for spatial music and Apple CarPlay for non-spatial music when the Tidal trial ends.

I create the Amazon playlists on my iPhone and they synch fairly well to the car, although I think I experienced some delay in synching when I was building the playlists. It would be very frustrating if the playlists weren't synching properly. Amazon Music does not resume where it left off, so the playlist always starts at the beginning. Before I start driving, I select the playlist, then I select the song I want to start with before driving. Amazon Music App in the car does support shuffling a playlist, but I don't use that feature.

If I'm going to select random songs while driving using voice commands or if I am going to listen to non-spatial music, then I use CarPlay for the improved interface and better features.

Spatial audio is an exceptional feature of the car, so I hope you are able to get Amazon or Tidal to be semi-functional so you can listen to some spatial music when driving. If not, listen to spatial music when the car is parked. It is quite the experience in the car. When Mercedes adds Atmos support to their CarPlay implementation, these interface issues will go away. Until then, the options are:

1. Copy spatial music to a USB drive. The car's USB interface resumes play where it left off. The car's interface isn't as good as Apple Music, especially for voice commands, but it is better than the Amazon or Tidal interfaces.
2. Avoid listening to spatial music and use CarPlay for the better interface and response to voice commands
3. Listen to spatial music on Amazon or Tidal with an interface that shouldn't be used while driving. Starting a playlist and selecting a song before driving works well.