Google on Monday announced that Apple Music is rolling out to Google Assistant-enabled smart displays and speakers. This means that users can finally make their switch from YouTube Music or Spotify to stream music from Apple’s library of 70 million songs using their voice.
According to 9to5Google, Google announced on its official blog:
“Starting today, Apple Music is rolling out to Google Assistant-enabled devices like Nest Audio, Nest Hub Max, Nest Mini, and more. Apple Music subscribers can search and play songs (more than 70 million!), albums and playlists—all ad-free—just by using their voice.”
Although Android has been supporting Apple Music for some time, and Apple Music even supported native Android features such as Chromecast, widgets, and even Android Auto, it was missing from Google’s ecosystem of smart devices. But not anymore, as once you link your Apple Music account from the Google Home app, you should be able to start playing music from the streaming service on your smart speakers and displays. You can talk to your speaker in your natural language like “Hey Google, play New Music Daily playlist” and ask it to play songs, albums, or playlists from specific artists.
Thanks to its Assistant-powered smart devices, you can also play music on all of the devices in your home by saying, “Hey Google, play music on all my speakers,” if you have such a setup.
As Apple Music is the latest entry in the major services that are fully supported on Google’s smart speakers, only Amazon Music and Tidal, which are both compatible with Echo speakers (which don’t support Google’s YouTube Music service) are left to be a part of the Google ecosystem. With support for just Apple Music and Pandora, Apple’s HomePod smart speakers are in a distant last place here, at the time of this writing.
Apple Music is available in 167 countries around the world, however, Google says that Apple Music support will begin rolling out on December 7th, 2020, only in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Japan. There is no surety about why Google is opting for such a limited roll-out.