Apple Music is coming to Echo devices in the coming weeks

[tomsem]

Interesting...

Apple Music subscribers will be able to enjoy Apple Music’s 50 million songs on Echo devices. Customers will be able to ask Alexa to play their favorite songs, artists, and albums—or any of the playlists made by Apple Music’s editors from around the world, covering many activities and moods. Customers will also be able to ask Alexa to stream expert-made radio stations centered on popular genres like Hip-Hop, decades like the 80s, and even music from around the world, like K-Pop. Just ask Alexa to play Beats 1 to hear Apple Music’s global livestream including in-depth artist interviews— all completely ad-free. Simply enable the Apple Music skill in the Alexa app and link your account to start listening.

https://blog.aboutamazon.com/devices...on-apple-music

[fjtorres]

They also support Android and, via iTunes, Windows.
They did pay $3B for it, after all.
(Headphone sales help, too.)

[frahse]

So quickly now lads, does anyone have the bottom line for this additional service?

The cost?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by frahse

So quickly now lads, does anyone have the bottom line for this additional service?

The cost?

The cost to whom?
Apple or consumers?

Consumers, the cost is what the subscription costs.

Apple? A couple person-hours of coding (Alexa skills are hobbyist grade effort levels.) and, maybe, some grudging dickering.

Pretty trivial compared to the cost of Beats.

[rem736]

i guess now that apple is moving more towards software and scaling back on hardware, it makes sense for apple to be more tolerant towards "hardware competitors" to have access to apple music.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The cost to whom?
Apple or consumers?

Consumers, the cost is what the subscription costs.

Apple? A couple person-hours of coding (Alexa skills are hobbyist grade effort levels.) and, maybe, some grudging dickering.

Pretty trivial compared to the cost of Beats.

It seems to be an Apple product delivered by Amazon, and I am curious as to where and how the money currents flow.

I am a Prime member, so I get some things from Amazon on Alexa, and Fire without additional cost, bu some things on Alexa or Fire cost extra.

So the question here for the above subject works out to be.
Pay money for the echo devices, and then:
money for the Prime membership or NOT,
then money for the extra Amazon service for some other items?

Money for certain Apple services: from the customer,
to Amazon, to Apple, to other as yet unspecified entities.

It could get complicated.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by frahse

It seems to be an Apple product delivered by Amazon, and I am curious as to where and how the money currents flow.

I am a Prime member, so I get some things from Amazon on Alexa, and Fire without additional cost, bu some things on Alexa or Fire cost extra.

So the question here for the above subject works out to be.
Pay money for the echo devices, and then:
money for the Prime membership or NOT,
then money for the extra Amazon service for some other items?

Money for certain Apple services: from the customer,
to Amazon, to Apple, to other as yet unspecified entities.

It could get complicated.

There is no added charge to the consumer.
Amazon doesn't handle any money or play any role between Apple and the consumer.
This isn't an Appstore deal with a 30% vig attached.
Alexa skills don't cost anything. Not to the user. Not to the developer. It's a (mostly) open system. (They even have ways for consumers to craft their own private skills, like command line batch files or scripts.)
And Amazon makes no money directly off them. The only cost to the developer is the billable time spent crafting the skill, which is relatively minor since the skills are little more than macros making API calls.

And Echoes aren't tied to Prime: you can buy an Echo and subscribe to AppleMusic and Amazon sees no more money than the price of the Echo. If that. Because you don't need an Echo to use Alexa.

Apple isn't paying Amazon and users aren't paying for using Alexa to reach Apple Music just as they don't pay for using it to reach Amazon Music, Pandora, or Spotify. It's the equivalent of using a browser: the skill is the equivalent of a web page. In this case, all it does is log you into the Apple Music account and forward the processed voice commands one way and the music stream the other.

The money here isn't in the connection but in expanding the, ahem, Echo-system. The win for Amazon is Apple's implied recognition that Alexa users are important enough to break away from their traditional Apple Hardware-only business model. That puts the Alexa ecosystem on a par with Android and Windows as platforms that *must* be supported, even if they compete with Apple's own products. It means Apple decided that expanding the reach of AppleMusic is more important than selling their own connected speaker.

There are a *lot* of Echo devices out there. A whole lot more than Apple speakers. This gives AppleMusic a chance to compete on equal terms with Spotify, Pandora, and AmazonMusic which were already accessible via Echoes and other Alexa devices.

Tech industry coopetition at its finest.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

There is no added charge to the consumer.
Amazon doesn't handle any money or play any role between Apple and the consumer.
----------
----------

There are a *lot* of Echo devices out there. A whole lot more than Apple speakers. This gives AppleMusic a chance to compete on equal terms with Spotify, Pandora, and AmazonMusic which were already accessible via Echoes and other Alexa devices.

Tech industry coopetition at its finest.

Perhaps, mayhaps, or not.

Still like the angler on "Lake Placid" I wonder at what I don't yet see coming up to the surface.

I currently have 2 Echos/Alexas (2nd generation), and a Google Home Mini. We have on (planned) order a new Car Echo Auto/Alexa, and I just gave a 3rd generation Echo/Alexa as a present.

I love the technology and it's capabilities.

[stumped]

We both Google home and Amazon echo.
And tend to rely on Spotify premium as that's the only service which works on both.
I don't think you can link Google play music to Alexa, or Amazon music unlimited to Google home yet

What is tricky though. Is arranging services so that both can be used in different rooms without trying to stream to 2 or more devices from the same music account. Especially because of how account selection works. Amazon echo. Alexa can only link to one music account , no matter who speaks. But Google home with voice match has a music account per person, plus a confusing rules for what to use for stranger's, for them It uses the music account of the 1st person who got to be voice matched. We can't set a default mussic account for strangersz that is different to both mine and my wifes. That would be handy as one Google home is in an apartment that we rent on Airbnb.

We have Spotify family, so 6 accounts to play around with. And still we get muddled. The home app will say this person has elected to use Spotify but will not say which of the 6 we assigned
Muddle in the fact that we also both have Spotify on pc, and Google music on Nvidia shield, and we will often cut off each others streams.
And with Google home, it does not say sorry. That account is already streaming, one device streams and the other just stops with no explanation.

Both services , both devices have a way to go to become truly family friendly
They really need to offer something like netflix 4 screens at once per account deal. Not one stream at a time maximum.

Also, Probably the legality of providing music on either device to paying guests is a total mess and requires a commercial licence, must like providing a dvd player and some discs, or a radio does. We take a don't ask don't tell approach to that mess and provide all of netflix. Prime video, Google home on streamers in our rental space. Using our own accounts plus pin for purchases protection on Amazon video

Our newest device is the jbl link view, their take on the Google home hub. Stereo speakers plus an eight inch screen.with Google assistant. Great audio quality. Way better then echo or Google home. It allegedly does video calls via Google duo, except we don't know anyone who uses duo that we can call ! But the grandchild can ask it to show kittens on you tube

[John F]

Originally Posted by frahse

..., and I just gave a 3rd generation Echo/Alexa as a present.

...

I thought the lateset Echo was the 2nd edition?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by John F

I thought the lateset Echo was the 2nd edition?

Echo DOT is up to the third. It's the most popular model, especially with contractors, so it evolves the fastest.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by John F

I thought the lateset Echo was the 2nd edition?

It is. He probably meant the Dot, which is 3rd generation.

[stumped]

it went echo 1st gen - the tall one with decent sound ( what we still have)
then split to echo & echo plus? - one shorter one and one with added hub functions, but no improved / possibly poorer sound according to some reviews...
then exploded into a myriad of show, look, dot, spot, cube, toaster ...
but still nothing approaching hi-fi audio
at some point they will probably rationalise it back into a 3 model ranges, like with their fire TV, fire tablets, e-readers - budget, mainstream & deluxe
the google range is quite sane in comparison : mini, standard, max prices on mini and standard were slashed here in UK in black friday week. The max is looking very overpriced compared with the JBL offering which has similar sound quality
Lenovo has a couple of smart display offerings- 8 inch and 10 inch, and other makers are on their way to market. I think google compatible devices will take the lions share of the smart screen market away from Amazon

we decided on google for our with-screen solution, because google photos is the better/ smarter picture offering, ( esp. as we have android phone / tablets which auto-upload camera to google) but we are keeping one echo for its ability to control a fire TV, as we have gone with that rather than with chromecast solutions

[John F]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Echo DOT is up to the third. It's the most popular model, especially with contractors, so it evolves the fastest.

Or he meant Echo 1st and 2nd gen (not 2nd and 3rd)?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by rem736

i guess now that apple is moving more towards software and scaling back on hardware, it makes sense for apple to be more tolerant towards "hardware competitors" to have access to apple music.

I don't necessarily know that apple is scaling back on hardware, it's just that services is seem as a bigger and bigger money stream. Successful businesses have multiple money streams to smoothing things out. I would guess that Apple is going to continue to incrementally improve their hardware.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is an indication that Apple's version of the echo has been a bit of a bust.