Apple Music Will Be Available On Amazon Echo Devices This December

Amazon’s range of Echo smart home speakers are already capable of streaming music from a number of services save for Apple Music. However, the company has now announced that Apple Music will be available to all of its Echo devices beginning the week of Dec. 17.

This means that owners of any Amazon Echo device will be able to ask Alexa to play any track available in Apple Music, including playlists and Beats 1 live radio. When the service becomes available, users will simply have to enable the Apple Music skill in the Alexa app and link their Apple Music account. After which, users can just say “Alexa, play *song title* on Apple Music” and it will play on the Echo device.

Amazon’s Echo devices already offer music from Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio and TuneIn, as per TechCrunch. The addition of Apple Music will further enrich the music streaming offerings of Amazon’s smart speakers, which now include the Echo, Echo Dot and the Echo Plus. This could also help Amazon fight off Google Home smart speakers, which are becoming more and more popular these days.

“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,” Amazon devices senior vice president Dave Limp said. “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.”

As for Apple, the decision to bring Apple Music to Amazon’s Echo devices may seem like it contradicts its strategy when it comes to its services. Apple typically restricts its own services to its own hardware to convince more people to buy its products. However, Apple Music has proven to be huge exception since the tech giant even made it available on Android devices in 2015.

In May, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple Music already had more than 50 million users, including those who are in free trial. MacRumors reported yesterday that Apple Music’s user base has grown to 56 million. Although that may be huge for the company, it’s still behind Spotify which has 87 million paid subscribers and 191 million monthly active users worldwide.

By bringing Apple Music to more devices like Amazon’s range of Alexa-powered Echo speakers, Apple could continue its speedy growth in the music streaming market. Although the company is behind Spotify in terms of global numbers, Apple Music is actually equally popular in the U.S. This past July, it was reported by Digital Music News that Apple Music and Spotify both had more than 20 million paying subscribers in the country, but Apple is said to be just “a hair ahead.”