Google announced this morning it’s adding support for Apple Music to its Google Nest smart speakers, as well as other Google Assistant-enabled smart speakers and displays in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Japan. This means Google’s flagship smart speaker devices, including Nest Audio, Nest Hub Max and Nest Mini, will now be able to play Apple Music songs, albums and playlists by way of voice commands, as will others.
The update makes Google’s own smart speakers more competitive with both Apple’s HomePod and newer HomePod Mini, as well as Alexa-enabled smart speakers like the Echo, which has supported Apple Music since late 2018.
To stream from Apple Music, Google device owners will need to first link their Apple Music account in the Google Home app then optionally set it as their default music service. After doing so, they’ll be able to use voice commands like “Hey Google, play New Music Daily playlist” or “Hey Google, play Rap Life playlist,” for example, or ask for any other specific song, artist or playlist the service offers.
Users will also be able to ask Google Assistant to stream music based on genre, mood or activity, or they can request Apple Music to stream from their own library of songs by saying, “Hey Google, play my library.”
Apple Music will also work in multi-device households, allowing Google device owners to stream across all their speakers at once, or to move music from one device to the others.
Today, many Google smart speaker owners may use a third-party service like Spotify, Pandora or Deezer — which are already supported in the Google Home app. But those who had been longtime Google Play Music customers have more recently had to make a decision as to whether to jump ship to a new service or stay within Google’s ecosystem, following the Google Play Music service shut down which saw the service merge with YouTube Music. As a result, some former Google Play Music customers moved to Apple Music to leverage its library feature.
RIP Google Music, one of the company’s last examples of generosity
Apple Music allows users to have up to 100,000 songs in their music library, which appeals to some of Google Play Music’s past customers. It also offers more than 70 million songs for on-demand, ad-free streaming.
Google says the new Apple Music support is rolling out starting today to supported devices.
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