Apple reminds users that Apple Music is now available on Amazon Echo
Apple has been ramping up its push-notification game recently this time to advertise Apple Music.
Most recently customers were notified that their Apple Music subscription could now be used on Amazon’s Echo smart speakers. This isn’t the first time Apple has sent out mass notifications either and it seems to be bringing mixed reactions. Last week Apple marketed a new episode of CarPool Karaoke and before that the company marketed iPhone XS/XR upgrades to iPhone Upgrade Program customers. The list goes on and on such as HomePod and App Store promotions.
What makes this truly ironic is that Apple strictly lays out criteria for sending out push-notifications in the App Store guidelines:
Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used for advertising, promotions, or direct marketing purposes or to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.
Of course you can turn off notifications (to an extent) if you’d prefer not to see them. Personally I don’t see a huge issue with the marketing tactics and considering it’s Apple software they should have a right to bend the App Store guidelines.
Coming back around to the beginning, to use the feature Echo users will need to enable the Apple Music skill within the Alexa app. In an email sent after activation, Apple reminds users to set the service as the default music library and default station service.