Amazon Echo update finally brings one of the biggest missing features to Alexa

Apple Music subscribers will soon be able to stream their favourite artists, albums, and playlists to the Amazon Echo hardware around their home for the first time. Echo has supported a range of streaming services since its UK launch back in September 2016, including Spotify, TuneIn and Prime Music. 

Despite bringing Apple Music to Android smartphones, Apple has been slow to adopt the hugely-popular smart speakers, like Amazon Echo and Google Home, restricting its music streaming offering to its own rival, HomePod. Until now.

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Amazon confirmed plans to bring Apple Music to its Echo speakers and Fire TV streaming set-top boxes in the United States earlier this year. It has now confirmed that Apple Music support will be headed to the UK "in the coming weeks".

To get started, you'll need to enable the Apple Music skill via the Alexa app, then link an Apple Music account to start listening on Fire TV and Amazon Echo speakers. If you've never tried Apple Music before, you're eligible for a three-month free trial with the service by signing-up within the Music app on iOS, or downloading the designated Apple Music app on Android.

To play your favourite tracks, artists, playlists, and albums you'll need to use the voice command, "Alexa, play today's hits on Apple Music" or "Alexa, play music by James Brown on Apple Music".

Apple is slowly breaking the habit of a lifetime and bringing some of its key services to hardware designed and built by other companies. With Apple Music now on Android and Amazon Echo devices – and with Google Home support coming soon, it looks like the Cupertino-based company is truly expanding the reach of its services.

That could be key going forward, with Apple set to unveil a video on-demand service to rival Netflix at its upcoming media event on March 25, 2019 it's currently unclear whether its shows will be seen by those with the latest Apple TV hardware, or whether Apple will roll-out its streaming service to rival devices, like Chromecast.

With a planned revival of Steven Spielberg's critically acclaimed 1985 anthology series Amazing Stories, as well as an as-yet untitled drama series from La La Land director Damien Chazellae, a psychological thriller by The Sixth Sense writer-director M. Night Shyamalan, and a new drama series with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon – it would be a real shame if the new Netflix and Prime Video challenger wasn't available on a wide variety of set-top boxes.