These are interesting times that we live in; you can literally bark instructions to your speaker, and it abides. Want to shuffle your playlist, just bark at it. Want to listen to a particular song, bark. Want to call up a friend? Bark at it for a super awesome hands-free phone call. Well, Amazon Echo is about to take things to a whole new level of awesomeness; I call it awesomeness maximus.

You see how you can listen to a great song, and think ‘ow this and that person should listen to this track.’ Well, thanks to a new update on Echo, you can now send that song to your friends Echo. They will then get to listen to it whenever and wherever they are using their Echo device.

As it works out, you only need to ask Alexa to share that music with ‘person X.’ Note; the said ‘person X’ has to be saved in your contact list. It is also interesting to note that the person with whom you are sharing the music does not have to be an Amazon Music subscriber.

They could be on Spotify, Pandora, or any other streaming service supported by Amazon Echo. Although, you, as the sender, need to be an Amazon Music subscriber. Once you have sent them the song, from their end, Alexa will search through their streaming service library and bring up the track for playback.

Hold up! Can Someone Remotely Force a Song on You?

Imagine sitting in your room and listening to some soothing music playing in the background as you go on about your business. Then all of a sudden, your Echo device changes the track it is playing to something completely different. So different that it, in fact, kills the vibe you had going on previously. All because your friend somewhere felt the urge to share with you a song through the Echo device. A friend who is perhaps miles away, or maybe even half-way around the world.

That sounds horrifying, doesn’t it? Well, relax! Nothing of the sort will ever happen. As it works out when someone shares with you a song via Echo. Alexa will give you a notification of the ‘new sent song.’ You can then opt to listen to the song now, or later.

What if the Song is not in my current Subscription

We all have different music streaming services, don’t we? There are those on Apply Music, YouTube Music (previously known as Google Play Music), Pandora, and Spotify among others. Say, someone on Amazon Music sent you a song, and you are not on the same music streaming platform. Then Alexa will take it upon itself to search through whichever service you are using, and play the same song.

Suppose Alexa fails to find the song on whichever music streaming service you have on Echo. Then it will search for radio stations that have the song based on the song’s title and the name of the artist. For instance, if the song Skin by Sabrina Carpenter was first released on Amazon Music and not yet on other competing platforms. Then Alexa will bring up a radio station that plays that song, instead of the streaming platform you have subscribed to. That is if the streaming service has yet to add the song to their catalog.

The Downside of UP

As they say, there is always the bad side of good, and that saying remains nonetheless true for smart speaker Amazon Echo. There are allegations running around the internet that seem to suggest that these smart speakers – not just the Echo device – are constantly listening.

That means they have an audio recording of not just whatever goes on in the room, but also what you have been saying. However, these are just allegations and might turn out to be not true.