Amazon has announced news its voice-activated assistant Alexa can now provide music for specific activities such as running, napping or meditating, among others.
Amazon editors create the playlists, drawing from the Amazon Prime Music streaming service and the Spotify-esque Amazon Music Unlimited, Tech Crunch reported.
While Amazon Music already supported some “activity” requests, which would connect a given command — like “Play music for a dinner party” — to a pre-created playlist curated by Amazon editors, the new “music for activities” offering takes the Alexa skill a step further. More than 500 different requests — voice commands — are currently supported, and users can even combine the requests to include a particular type of music.
For example, Amazon Alexa users can ask for “pop music for cooking” or “classical music for sleeping,” as well as many other combinations. Requests so far seem to range from common activities — like meditation, working out or falling asleep — to more creative scenarios like “getting pumped,” “hooking up” or “baby making.”
Amazon said it built these improved voice controls based on how Alexa users were using voice commands to request their tunes. The most popular music request users made was for “music to destress,” accounting for approximately 27 percent of incoming music-focused Alexa requests.
The new Alexa skill update is now available on all Alexa-enabled devices, but, like most of Alexa’s music playback functionality, you’ll want to be an Amazon Music subscriber to take advantage of it. Prime Membership offers a discounted Amazon Music Unlimited subscription for $7.99 per month. Non-Prime users can access the music service for $9.99 per month.
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