Apple Music has been making big headway in the U.S. in recent years, now ranking as the most popular paid music streaming service in the nation, eclipsing global powerhouse Spotify for the top spot.
On Wednesday, March 13, Apple Music announced it is finally available on Amazon Fire TV devices, rounding out a steady embrace of Amazon’s Alexa platform that began late in 2018.
For a long time, there was a major hole for Apple Music in Amazon’s smart devices. Namely, until November 2018, Apple Music wasn’t compatible with anything inside of Amazon’s ever-growing Alexa ecosystem. That first changed with Apple Music’s adoption of all Echo speakers in November, then with an announcement that the company was working on supporting third-party Alexa devices, and now with the full embrace of Fire TV devices.
It’s worth noting that Spotify and other music streaming services have been fully integrated with Alexa devices for years, making Apple something of a latecomer. Still, it makes sense that Apple would initially be reticent to offer its music streaming service to competitors’ products. After all, Apple makes its own HomePod smart speaker.
But it also makes sense why the company eventually came around to integrating with Amazon’s devices: If someone owned an Amazon Fire TV or Alexa smart speaker before picking their on-demand streaming service of choice, they would be exponentially more likely to subscribe to a competitor.
Using Apple Music on Fire TV is extremely easy. All you have to do is install the Apple Music skill on the Alexa app and you can start asking Alexa to play your favorite music straight from the device; it is even compatible with multi-room playback via the Fire TV Cube. Those who previously enabled the skill to use it with their Echo devices will find that their Fire TV works with Apple Music without them having to enable the skill.
Apple has been opening up to outside device manufacturers as of late. It recently announced that AirPlay 2 will soon be coming Roku devices, likely as a way of drumming up camaraderie between major streaming device companies before it launches its much-anticipated on-demand streaming service later this year.
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