Amazon Offering Apple Products
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.
It’s still an open question whether Apple sees subscription content (mostly music now, with more original shows and movies coming soon) as something for its own devices, or cross-platform. Making Apple Music available to Echo devices sure sounds more like the latter.
Nearly two weeks after Amazon reached an agreement with Apple to sell more of its products, a selection of Apple products are available on Amazon in the United States, including the latest iPad Pro, Apple Watch Series 4, MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, Mac Pro, and Mac mini models.
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Amazon has yet to begin selling any new iPhones directly from Apple or its network of Apple Authorized Resellers, but the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR are expected to be available soon as part of the deal. One product that won’t be available is the HomePod since it is an Amazon Echo competitor.
Apple has often used exclusivity to drive hardware sales, which is one reason why you can’t watch iTunes purchases on Amazon Fire TV or Roku devices. Now the HomePod needs to compete as a high-end premium speaker, rather than as literally the only option if you want to give voice commands to an Apple Music-enabled smart speaker.
This is a move that could have huge ramifications for Apple’s forthcoming TV service, which has left the Apple TV caught between Apple’s current desire to grow services revenue and its classic focus on hardware profit margins. In fact, it brings to mind a similar move from back in 2002 and 2003, when Apple made the iPod compatible with Windows PCs.
Apple’s desire to grow services revenue stands in direct opposition to whatever passes for a TV hardware strategy in Cupertino. To grow subscribers they need to lower the cost of the devices required to view video service content, subsidize their sale, or make the service available on the platforms they compete with. If they don’t, then this is over a billion that they wouldn’t be able to make back as a niche, premium content provider.
Previously: Amazon Kicks Off Unauthorized Apple Refurbishers, Amazon Will Stop Selling Nest Smart Home Devices, YouTube Drops Echo Show, Amazon Adds Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video Finally Available for Apple TV, Apple TV 4K, Still a Hobby, Cultural Insularity and Apple TV, The Apple Music and HomePod Strategy.
Update (2018-12-19): JJ:
Alexa works on Sonos One
Apple Music works on Sonos One
Apple Music works with Alexa
Alexa doesn’t work with Apple Music on Sonos One
Update (2018-12-28): Upgrade:
John Siracusa joins Jason to discuss the future of Apple’s ARM processors and how they might change the Mac, Apple Music coming to the Amazon Echo and what that might mean about the future of Apple’s forthcoming TV service, whether they’re using their TiVos as much as they used to, and the prospects for an Apple-built external touchscreen display.
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