Amazon and Apple might be competing in the smart speaker and music market, but the companies are coming together next month.
Starting the week of December 17, Apple Music users will be able to stream the service’s 50 million songs through Amazon’s Alexa virtual personal assistant. When the feature goes live, users will be able to ask Alexa to play songs or playlists and look up artists and albums, Amazon said in a statement. Those songs will then stream to Alexa-enabled devices, including Amazon’s own line of Echo smart home products.
In a statement, Amazon said that streaming music is “one of the most popular features” on its Alexa virtual personal assistant. However, Apple Music has been conspicuously absent. Users who have wanted to stream tracks on Amazon devices would need to use the company’s own Prime Music or other third-party services that allow for music streaming, like Pandora. Even Spotify, Apple’s chief rival in the music-streaming business, already works with Amazon’s Alexa.
Apple has long been slow to bring its services to competing platforms, but has been more willing to do so in recent years. Apple Music, for instance, already works on Android devices, as well as Microsoft’s Windows 10. Bringing it to Amazon devices means many more people could turn to Apple Music to listen to tracks throughout the home.
Apple Music will be available at no additional charge on Alexa devices.