From iTunes on PCs to Apple Music on Android smartphones, Apple has shown itself willing to take its digital-music platforms beyond its own devices. In the latter case, Apple Music has been installed more than 10m times on Android devices so far.
Now there’s a new partnership, with Amazon. “We’re excited to announce that Apple Music will be available on Echo devices beginning the week of December 17,” announced a blog post from Amazon on Friday. That means Apple Music customers will be able to request music, playlists and radio stations from Alexa to play on their Echos – radio station Beats 1 included.
This isn’t just about reaching a wider audience of smart-speaker owners than just those who own Apple’s own HomePod. It’s also about widening Apple’s firehose of data on how people are interacting with music using voice, beyond the fairly-affluent demographic who’ve paid $349 for a HomePod. That should help Apple to continue improving its own service and devices as voice-control grows more in the future.
There must be something in the water regarding these big-tech partnerships, too: Amazon appears to be making its own music-streaming service available for Google’s Android TV platform.
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