Alexa music alarm wakes you up with news and tunes

Amazon has bestowed Alexa with new abilities, ones that surround its alarm functionality. Alexa can be used to set an alarm; that is nothing new. However, thanks to a new update, these users can now set Alexa to wake them up with specific music, bringing back the days of being awoken with a radio alarm clock. This functionality covers multiple music services, including the company's own Amazon Music app (if you're a subscriber).READ: Amazon Echo Review (2017)

The new functionality is available to Alexa users now. With it, you can tell Alexa to set an alarm that will wake you up using a specific artist, radio station, genre of music, or song from one of multiple apps. If you don't have Amazon Music, you can use Pandora, Spotify, SiriusXM, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio — this covers both subscription and free options, giving everyone a way to utilize the feature.

A variety of voice commands can be used to set up these alarms. For example, if you just want Alexa to use a music alarm but you're not concerned about the specific music used, you can simply say, "Alexa, wake me up at 8AM every day to music." The option also exists to wake up to news by saying, for example, "to BBC News."

You can choose a specific artist and time instead, such as "wake me up to Adele," or a certain era or genre of music like, "wake me up to 90s music" or "wake me up to classical music." You can choose a specific song and specific artist by saying both, and you can also choose the music app — for example, "set an alarm for 6AM using BBC news on TuneIn."

If you're an Amazon Music subscriber, you get a few extra features on top of this. You can tell Alexa to wake you up to music for a specific activity, like running, at a certain time, as well as a certain mood of music — relaxing music, for example. Finally, Amazon Music subscribers in particular are also given the option of telling Alexa to wake them up with a song with specific lyrics, an option for those who know the song but can't remember its name.