Big news today in the smart home assistant world: Apple Music will soon become a source for the Amazon Echo devices. Here’s a bit from Amazon’s blog post about the move:
“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 Dave Limp, senior vice president, Amazon Devices. “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. We’re thrilled to bring Apple Music – one of the most popular music services in the US – to Echo customers this holiday.”
My household is in a slow transition away from the Echo and to the HomePod, but I still want to see how this works when it rolls out on December 17. I assume there will be some limitations to the integration when compared to the HomePod itself, as does Federico:
I expect the Music/Echo integration to be more limited than HomePod (no word on lyrics search, for example), and of course HomePod will work with HomeKit/iCloud/iOS apps, but this is a major shift for Apple regardless (and a good move to grow Music) https://t.co/teMpta77SW
— Federico Viticci (@viticci) November 30, 2018
However the details shake out, this is a huge move. It signals that Apple is interested in expanding its services beyond its hardware, something unthinkable just a few years ago. My guess is that this will make a lot of Apple Music users quite happy.