There had been some features we’ve found wanting on the Amazon Echo making the Amazin Alexa AI system working behind the scene not so intelligent enough as we expect.
But the new upgrade is part of what users had been calling for over the past couple of years. The new upgrade now makes it possible for Apple Music subscribers to be able to stream their favorite artists, albums and playlist directly from the Amazon Echo smart home speaker.
While the Echo had supported some music streaming services since it’s launch in Europe back in September 2016 including Spotify, TuneIn and Prime Music, this will be first music streaming collaboration between Apple and Amazon.
While Apple Music had been easily accessible on smartphones, Apple had been slow to adopt the hugely popular smart speaker devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home considering the fact that these are the rivals of it’s own HomePod smart speaker device.
Amazon had earlier confirmed it would be bringin on the Apple Music to it’s Echo speaker and even the Fire TV streaming set – top boxes in the United States earlier this year, the confirmation had now been made official that the Apple Music support will be headed to the UK just in few weeks time.
To access this new addition, you’ll just need to activate the Apple Music skill on the Alexa mobile application and then link your Apple Music account to start listening to musics on your Fire TV and the Amazon Echo speakers.
For those that never tried the Apple Music before, there is a free three-month trial ones you sign up on the Music app on an iOS device or by downloading the mobile app on your Android smartphone.
To play your favourite tracks, artists, playlists, and albums you’ll need to use the voice command, “Alexa, play today’s hits on Apple Music” or “Alexa, play music by James Brown on Apple Music”. Then Alexa do it’s thing by researching and playing the music requested.
As we all know, Apple is slowing incorporating it’s services into third party companies which wasn’t common for the company considering it’s monopoly system years before.
While the cooperation with other companies might help Apple garner more users worldwide especially those that aren’t using any of their devices. Also, the company is set to unveil it’s video on-demand service which would rival Netflix and even the Amazon Prime (which isn’t really succeeding at all).
It’s currently unclear whether its shows will be seen by those with the latest Apple TV hardware, or whether Apple will roll-out its streaming service to rival devices, like Chromecast.
With a planned revival of Steven Spielberg’s critically acclaimed 1985 anthology series Amazing Stories, as well as an as-yet untitled drama series from La La Land director Damien Chazellae, a psychological thriller by The Sixth Sense writer-director M. Night Shyamalan, and a new drama series with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon – it would be a real shame if the new Netflix and Prime Video challenger wasn’t available on a wide variety of set-top boxes.