Apple Music coming to Amazon Echo speakers this month

Hey Alexa, say hi to Siri. Apple Music and its 50 million tracks are coming to Amazon’s Echo smart speakers with Alexa starting the week of December 17.

Until now, Apple Music’s 56 million subscribers could stream through an Echo by pairing their phone/tablet via Bluetooth to the speaker.

Now the team-up between the two rival companies means they can call for specific tracks or artists, or access their favourite playlists.

“Given the size and scope of Apple Music, it’s been one of the most asked for features for the past three or four years since we’ve had Echo and Alexa out there," says Dave Limp, Amazon.com senior VP for devices & services.

“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.”

Apple’s senior vice president for Internet software and services, Eddy Cue, states: “One of the things we’ve always believed with music — and this goes back to the iTunes days — is to try to make the music services as widely available as possible.

“We started by making it available on Windows, and you remember when hell froze over.

“We’ve had it available on Sonos devices (and) Android devices.

“We love the ability of people who have Echos to be able to listen and have the full experience of Apple Music on their devices.”

Apple, of course, sells its own smart speaker, the HomePod.

But Apple only has 6% of the market share for these devices, compared to Amazon’s Echo (which has 43.6% ) and Google’s Home (26.5%).

In Q1 2-18, researchers Strategy Analytics reported that in this period, HomePod shipped a mere 600,000 units compared to Echo’s 4 million and  Home’s 2.4 million.

In early November Tidal service began to be streamed via Echo.