Alexa Cast Brings A Long-Awaited Feature To Amazon Music
Amazon has announced that Amazon Music is getting Alexa Cast compatibility, bringing it one step closer to being a fully-fledged competitor to Spotify. Casting, of course, is not a new concept, but the Amazon Music app has been strangely missing that kind of functionality up until now. That all changes today, as you can now cast music from your phone to any Alexa device you might own.
That means you're not just limited to casting your music to first-party Alexa speakers like the Echo and the Echo Dot, as the feature should work with third-party devices that offer built-in Alexa support as well. There's always the possibility that we'll see Alexa Cast functionality built into other apps eventually, but for now, the feature is only available in Amazon Music.
It's long overdue, too. Before Alexa Cast launched, there wasn't really an easy way to go from listening to music on your phone to listening on your speaker. Playback on Alexa speakers was typically limited to voice commands, but with the launch of Alexa Cast, you simply need to go to the "now playing" page in the Amazon Music app, tap the Alexa Cast icon, and then select from a list of available Alexa devices to begin casting.
Another benefit to Alexa Cast is that it allows you to control playback of your music from your phone. This was possible before if you paired your phone to your speaker via Bluetooth, but this is definitely a more elegant solution.
It's been a fairly big week for music on Alexa devices. On Monday, Amazon rolled out a new equalizer for many Echo speakers that can be pulled up and changed through voice commands, which makes an excellent pairing with this new Alexa Cast functionality. Alexa Cast is available from today on the iOS [download] and Android [download] versions of the Amazon Music app, so be sure to apply the update and get to casting.