Skip to main content

Apple Music is coming to Echo devices next month

Amazon’s Echo smart speakers already support a variety of music services, including Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. And from December 17th, Apple Music will join this little cohort.

Apple Music users will be able to ask Alexa to play 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 to run 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.”



from The Verge - Teches https://ift.tt/2Q46roD

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to install Fortnite on Android

Epic Games launched its battle royale hit Fortnite on Android devices last week with a big catch: it was exclusive to Samsung-made phones for a few days as a way to help market the new Samsung Galaxy Note 9. Now, the exclusivity period appears to be over, and beta invite codes are going out to select users of non-Samsung phones like the Google Pixel 2 XL. If you’re itching to dive off the battle bus on mobile, you might have to hold on just a little while longer: there appears to be a waiting list, just like there was when the game launched on iOS. There’s also a bit of trickiness involving exactly how you get the app because Epic announced it would be distributing the Android version of Fortnite on its own terms . Last week, the app was distributed through Samsung’s app store, and Epic is using its own website and a Fortnite Installer program to distribute the game more widely on all compatible Android devices. (Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said this is basically to avoid paying Google...

Apple’s Siri Shortcuts app now available for iOS 12

Apple is making Siri a lot more powerful in both iOS 12 and watchOS 5. Siri’s new Shortcuts feature is now available to download for iOS 12 users, and it allows iPhone and Apple Watch users to use Siri to step through multistep routines. Shortcuts replaces the previous Workflow app that Apple acquired last year, and is designed to allow you to create custom commands in Siri that launch apps or combine a number of actions in a similar way to IFTTT. You can do things like tell Siri you’re “watching a movie” and the digital assistant will switch your phone to do not disturb. A number of app developers are also launching their own custom Siri shortcuts with iOS 12, which will help the assistant display more information when you create a custom phrase. Citymapper is one of the first big apps with Siri shortcuts support, allowing you to create a shortcut to ask “when’s my next train” and get relevant updates and even platform information. You can download Siri Shortcuts from the App Sto...