If you're like any of the other millions of college students who follow the crowd and what's considered "cool," you probably have Amazon Prime (if you don't, get it here). Every year, the Jungle-themed e-commerce company offers a 6-month student trial of their premium service to 18-24 year olds across the nation who are less excited about orientation than they are about Amazon's guaranteed 2-day shipping.
If this sounds like you, or you forgot to cancel the subscription before the 6 months were up, you probably didn't realize that your exclusive Prime Membership gives you access to a multitude of other cool features. Videos? Mp3's?! Want more bang for your buck? Check it out...
Prime Video
"For codswallop's sake, I already have Netflix," is probably your response to Amazon Prime's video streaming service. Like its sexier cousin, Amazon Prime delivers a wide array of cinematic and television content right to your fingertips, which you can access through the website or the mobile app.
"Blimey Harry, I look like Voldemort with this nose"
via Amazon
Amazon features a lot of great content, including a lot of popular new releases including the "Wolf of Wall Street" and "Hunger Games" and even our favorite, "Sex and the City" (Spectrum is such a Carrie). However, Amazon's site is deliberately misleading. Not all of its content is free, vastly reducing its library. Only videos labelled 'Prime' are truly prime—sigh. We're sad to say "The Parent Trap" and "Bojack Horseman" are not on Amazon prime—it's a little lacklustre.
We don't have to pay for Sharkboy and Lavagirl!
But we don't get the titles that truly matter
Prime Music
"For bloody sake I already have Spotify" is probably your response to Amazon Prime's music streaming service. Like its greener cousin, Amazon gives you access to some of the latest hits which you can also conveniently access through the website or app.
The interface is surprisingly black, sleek and snazzy. The classics are there, your Adele's and your Backstreet Boys. All in all, it's a pretty intuitive experience. We at Spectrum, however, can't forgive some notable absences. Seriously: no Michael Jackson, the leading sales artist of all time? Or Selena Gomez, this generation's voice for young women? This is hardly a minor problem, and it's why we can't recommend Amazon Prime for music.
Prime Photos
Finally, for some reason Amazon offers a service called 'Prime Photos' which is really just a cloud storage service that gives you 5GB of space. I'm wondering why they even include this when Google Drive offers 15GB without the cultish interface. A truly strange inclusion on Amazon's part.
wtf even is this
If you're wondering whether the jump to Amazon Prime is truly worth it, we here at Spectrum suggest that it probably isn't. There are far better sources of video, music and cloud sharing that work out to around the same price and have far better content. However, it's nice to know that Amazon has made an effort to supply us with this useless resource. For now, shopaholics may want to consider making their purchases from someone else's Prime account...
