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Amazon adds Spotify to Echo
Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY
7:44 a.m. PST February 5, 2016




NEW YORK—Rumors have been swirling lately that Amazon is working on a rich premium music service to rival Spotify. In the meantime, though, Amazon announced Thursday that it is welcoming Spotify onto Echo, the company’s 9¼-inch-tall voice-driven, cloud-connected Bluetooth speaker that is an early success story in the burgeoning Internet of Things age.

For the uninitiated, the $179.99 Echo resembles a container for a small, rolled-up poster, and it responds hands-free to your voice commands. Among other capabilities, you can ask Echo (or more precisely ask Echo’s female alter-ego Siri-like virtual assistant “Alexa”) to read an Audible book aloud, deliver news, sports, traffic and the weather, control lights, and just in time for the Super Bowl, even order a pizza from Dominos. (Echo will be featured in Amazon's first ever Super Bowl ad Sunday, which stars Alec Baldwin and Dan Marino.)

The initial set-up is handled through your smartphone, after which all Echo requires is an Internet connection.

Of course you could always ask Alexa to play music. Until now she complied by tapping into iHeartRadio, Pandora, TuneIn, and naturally Amazon’s own music services, Amazon Music and Prime Music. You could ask her to play a particular song, genre, playlist or station and skip tracks by issuing voice commands (e.g, “Alexa, play David Bowie.”). And since Echo is Bluetooth-enabled, you could also stream other music services to the speaker from a smartphone or tablet.

Adding Spotify to the mix with its on-demand library of 30 million tracks is an important get for Amazon. “Music is one of the most popular features on Amazon Echo, and Spotify has been one of the most requested services, so we’re excited to bring it to our customers today,” said Toni Reid, Director, Amazon Alexa in a statement.

You will have to subscribe to Spotify Premium to take advantage of Spotify on Echo. The cost is $9.99 per month after a 30 day free trial.

As for the speculation surrounding Amazon’s own new standalone premium music service, it is possible that if you buy Echo, you’ll be able to access Amazon's rumored music service if and when it shows up at a reduced rate.

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