Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Loved my 9, yes, 9, echo dots (not including those bought as gifts for friends), until Amazon changed how they play music choices. I was ecstatic that I could play synchronized music throughout my house, but as of November 2022, the entire echo experience has been totally trashed. I can no longer play music of my choice. The other Alexa features are nice, i.e.: setting timers, reminders, controlling lights, etc., but for me and every one of my friends, the primary benefit was playing synchronized music of choice throughout the house on pretty decent speakers at a reasonable cost. Now, rather than being able to request a specific song, artist, or album, all requests are, as Alexa says, 'shuffling' your request plus 'others in a similar genre', with a limited number of skips allowed. I've been a Prime Member almost since its inception, and have been more than positive in my reviews of Amazon products and services, but I can think of nothing positive to say about this change. It was obviously done with the intention of forcing people to subscribe to Amazon Music; even the supposed great new benefit offered to Prime Customers of being able to create your own playlists is horrifically adulterated by 'shuffling' the songs in the customer's playlist with songs 'of a similar genre'. I thought, yay, I'll try that, and set up a playlist of 18 songs to try it out. Alexa played 3 of my songs, then interjected a song by an artist I have never requested. I thought, ok, I can deal with an occasional non-requested song/artist. Alexa then played another song from my playlist, but after that played nothing that I would EVER listen to by choice. After approximately 5 or 6 of these and never returning to a single song from my playlist, I said 'sc#@w' this and told her to stop. What a terrible loss. Amazon: as big a fan as I have always been of your services and products, I will NEVER be forced to join an Amazon Music monthly subscription, specifically because of efforts to bully me into doing so. I just lost an incredible amount of respect for Amazon.