Amazon Music starts rolling out Alexa on mobile app

Amazon has started updating its Amazon Music iOS app with its Alexa voice assistant.

Use of the Alexa push-to-talk button kicked off overnight in the United States, the United Kingdom, German and Austria.

There is no word on which countries are next in the roll-out.

But users in these four territories can use Alexa to play songs by genre, decade, mood, tempo, activity and even lyrics if they can’t remember the song title.

Alexa is increasingly being used by customers to access the 40 million songs on Amazon’s streaming service in the home. 

But with mobile it can now be used for extra music options as when driving in a car, running or commuting. 

For instance, Amazon suggests, if you’re going out of town you can ask for “music for a road trip”.

If you’re heading to a class reunion, you can kick-start the nostalgic mood by asking for songs you used to dig together in ’07. 

If you’re on your way to a Foo Fighters concert, command “Play the song that goes ‘Banging on the ceiling, banging on the ceiling, keep it down,’” and Alexa will play ’The Sky Is A Neighborhood’ from their new album Concrete and Gold.

“Amazon Music customers already know and love Alexa from listening on Echo devices,” claims Steve Boom, VP of Amazon Music. 

“Now our mobile listeners can enjoy an entirely new app experience that combines the power and simplicity of Alexa voice controls with the visual richness of the Amazon Music app.” 

Amazon has been of late expanding Alexa to control the Fire TV stick and stream music through multiple Echo devices. 

In the future Alexa will be integrated into smart glasses as Amazon moves into the wearables market.

As a result of this expansion, Alexa is increasingly seen by the music industry as a key vehicle to introducing new music to consumers.

It is also eyeing Alexa as a way to make Amazon’s music services more competitive, the Wall Street Journal said.

Music companies are looking into how songs are categorized and tagged, and how that data can be made to be more responsive to voice-activated applications like Alexa. 

Last month, Amazon was advertising for an Australian Head of Digital Music and GM of Music among 230 jobs being advertised across the company for imminent arrival. 

Set to launch in December, Apple’s HomePod smart speaker uses Siri for users to have a “virtual personal DJ” to play their music according to their tastes. 

This month it launched iOS11 with more voice command functionality.