Like Spotify, Amazon Music Unlimited has an offline listening mode on smartphones, but it goes a little further. If you sing or say the lines you remember, Alexa will search the app’s database of lyrics to fill in the blanks, even if you miss a word or two, and play the song that contains them.Īmazon is also revamping its app as part of the launch of the new subscription service. The Amazon Music app is available for Fire devices, iOS, Android, Web, PC and Mac. During a demo this week, for example, a request for “happy 80s pop music” resulted in Chaka Khan’s “I Feel For You.”Īlexa can help Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers identify songs based on lyrics. The larger catalog boosts the chances of a relevant result. Users will be able to ask Alexa to play music using other variables - like mood, genre and era. But Amazon’s system uses different inputs, such as which song is moving up the charts or getting lots of play on the radio. The company is also using some smart computing behind the scenes to differentiate the experience. For example, Echo users will be able to ask Alexa to “play the new song by Adele.” Because tracks in an album have the same release date, a simple chronological check wouldn’t do the trick, Redington explained. “Can we get more customers in by providing an entry price point tied to a specific, single Echo device?” “It allows us to really expand the paid streaming music market,” said Ryan Redington, director of Amazon Music, describing the strategy in an interview this week at the company’s newest office tower in Seattle.

In a world where people increasingly expect everything to work everywhere, the Echo-only tier might seem out of place, even at less than $4 a month. But Amazon is pitching the option as an add-on experience for Echo owners, going beyond the 2 million tracks available in the existing Amazon Prime Music service that comes with the $99/year Amazon Prime subscription. To use Amazon Music Unlimited on multiple devices, including smartphones, you’ll need to pay $7.99 if you’re an Amazon Prime member, or $9.99 if you’re not.

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