Big news: Apple Music will be available on Amazon‘s Echo devices in the coming weeks.
That’s according to a blog post published by Amazon, today (November 30), which states that ‘subscribers will be able to enjoy Apple Music’s 50 million songs on Echo devices’ beginning the week of December 17.
There will be an Apple Music skill added in the Alexa app.
This integration is big news because Apple of course sells its own smart speaker, the HomePod.
But it certainly hasn’t sold as well as Amazon’s Echo or Google’s Home smartspeaker.
According to a Q1 2018 report by researchers Strategy Analytics, the HomePod only shipped 600,000 units across the period – compared to 4m for Echo and 2.4m for Home.
In September MBW explored how Apple’s 6% market share of these shipments (compared to Amazon’s 43.6% and Google’s 26.5%) could have been a result of the product being brought to market a little bit late in the game, or because of the price point, or because they’re just not as ‘smart’ as their competitors’ speakers.
But now, starting less than two weeks before Christmas, current (and future) Echo owners will be able to ask Alexa to play songs, radio stations and Beats 1 shows via Apple Music.
“We’re excited to bring Apple Music to our Alexa customers this holiday season,” says Amazon in its DayOne blog post.
“We’re thrilled to bring Apple Music – one of the most popular music services in the US – to Echo customers this holiday.”
Dave Limp, Amazon Devices
“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.”
As stated by Amazon’s Dave Limp above, the introduction of Amazon’s self-service Music Skill API has resulted in the integration of more music streaming services with the firm’s market-leading smart speaker.
Earlier this month Tidal announced that its service can now be streamed via Echo, claiming to be the first music streaming service to build with the Music Skill API.
Music Business Worldwide
