Amazon’s Echo smart speakers already support a variety of music services, including Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. And starting on December 17th, Apple Music will join this little cohort.
Apple Music users will be able to ask Alexa to play their favorite songs, artists, and albums, as well as any of the streaming service’s curated playlists and radio stations. Echo owners will simply need to enable the Apple Music skill in the Alexa app, link their account, and they’ll be good to go.
Making Apple Music available on Echo devices might seem like it’s running counter to Apple’s usual strategy of using services as a lure for hardware (and vice versa), but the company can apparently see the sense of making its streaming service available on the most popular home speaker platform out there. It also seems to be happier about appearing on Amazon’s platform recently. Earlier this month, it struck a new deal with the e-commerce giant to sell iPhones, iPads, and other Apple products on its site.
“Music is one of the most popular features on Alexa—since we launched Alexa four years ago, customers are listening to more music in their homes than ever before,” said senior VP of Amazon devices, Dave Limp, in a blog post. “We are committed to offering great music providers to our customers and since launching the Music Skill API to developers just last month, we’ve expanded the music selection on Alexa to include even more top tier services.”
