Alexa has a new trick up its sleeve, sharing music. Amazon today has announced a new feature that owners of Alexa speakers can play around with called music sharing.
Think of it as a convenient way to share your favorite tracks with someone who you think might like the same music. Or to force music on your friends who refuse to listen to that one track you keep telling them about.
Whatever your reasons for wanting to, music sharing can be accessed from any Echo speaker that you have in the home. The feature is also live as of today so any users who have an account setup with Alexa should be able to access the new feature.
Alexa will notify recipients that you’re sharing music with them
Amazon says that Alexa will notify a recipient when music is being shared. So there’s less of a chance that the user will miss the incoming song.
When you share music with friends or family, they’ll be alerted to the song incoming. To listen to it, they simply have to ask Alexa to listen to their messages. This will result in Alexa asking if the user wants to listen to the song that was shared.
Pretty simple. If you’re the one wanting to the do the sharing, all you have to do is ask Alexa to “share this song” and then mention the name of the person you want to hear it.
You will have to be already listening to music for this feature to be available. If you’re streaming music to your Echo speaker, then you can ask Alexa to share the currently playing track. Users even have the ability to choose which device they want to listen to the song on by tapping the push notification that arrives on their phone.
The person needs to be saved as an Alexa contact
Other than already listening to a song before it can be shared, you can only share songs with recipients that are saved as Alexa contacts.
The recipient will also need to have their own Echo speaker or phone with the Alexa app. Amazon isn’t restricting the the music app compatibility. So if you heard the song on Spotify, the recipient doesn’t have to have Spotify as well.
The song will play through Spotify if the person has an account. Whether or not they choose it, or have Spotify set as their default music streaming app. But having a specific music service isn’t required.