Alexa can now play music depending on the owner’s activities

Amazon’s Alexa-powered ECHO smart speaker is the most popular device of its kind in the market today. There is a range of things that the Alexa assistant is capable of performing just by a simple voice command. However, Amazon has now added another interesting feature, through which people can listen to music based on the activity that they are engaged in.

Alexa can now provide music matching activities

Through this new update, all Echo users will be able to prompt Alexa to play a song best suited for a particular activity for over 500 different activities. For instance, if someone is cooking in the kitchen, they can command the speaker to play something to cook to. The assistant will then perform a search and play a song or tune suitable for the cooking activity.

This new feature will make use of Amazon’s free music streaming services, Prime Music, as well as Amazon Music Unlimited, which is specifically designed to work in conjunction with Alexa and Echo speakers.

Amazon Music Unlimited is a Spotify like service which can understand and respond to a wide variety of voice commands. At launch, this service allowed Echo owners to request for songs based on genres, mood, and even lyrics. However, with this new update, the owners will no longer have to fiddle with the various songs and tunes to find one suitable for the activity they are engaged in.

However, this use of voice command to find better music for an activity can further be customized. For example, a user can ask Alexa to play Jazz music for cooking and the speaker will search the music streaming database to find jazz tunes which may be suitable for that particular activity. Similarly, users can also ask for classical music when they go to sleep or rock music when they hit the gym.

Amazon revealed that the most popular choice was music for de-stressing. 27 percent of all music requests were for this in which people want a soothing tune or song to relax to after the end of a hectic day. This demand is seen elsewhere as well in Apple Music with a specialized category designed for people looking to listen to some relaxing tunes.

How is Alexa able to select the right music for a particular activity?

It is not certain how Alexa is able to pick the right kind of music to compliment a particular activity. The company also did not reveal what kind of programming it is using in this case. The feature is now available to all Echo owners with a paid Amazon Unlimited Music subscription or to those Prime customers with free music streaming.