Josh Hendrickson
If you’re the kind of person who needs to share the latest and greatest song with all your friends (whether they like or not), Alexa is about to make that easier. In an update rolling out now, you’ll be able to ask Alexa to share a song with your friends’ Echo devices, and they’ll get to listen regardless of what music services they use. If they want to hear the song, that is.
That’s right; your friends don’t need to subscribe to Amazon Music or even the particular streaming service you use. When you ask Alexa to share the song, it’ll check what service they do have and pull the song up through it, whether that be Spotify, Amazon Music, or anything else that supports Echo devices.
You also can’t force songs on people (thankfully). Instead, they’ll get a notification of a new message. Once they listen to the message, they can choose to listen to the song. And if you can never remember the name of the song you’re listening to, fear not. All you have to say is, “Alexa, share this song with Claire” (or John, etc.). They’ll just need to be on your contact list.
If Alexa can’t find the song in your friend’s streaming service options, it’ll offer a radio station based on the song’s title and artist name. Amazon says the feature is rolling out now and that this is “just the beginning.” It plans to unveil more features like this in the future.
What’s unclear is if any of your friends will appreciate all the song sharing, or if they’ll just delete every message and claim it never arrived.
Source: Amazon
