Spicing up voice apps on Amazon’s Alexa assistant with jammin’ tunes just got a whole lot easier. The Seattle firm today announced the general availability of the Music Skill API, which allows developers to stream songs from online services to Alexa devices and Amazon Echo speakers in the U.S.Amazon unveiled the Music Skill API in September, but this week marks its public debut.“The Music Skill API gives you self-service access to the Alexa capabilities you need to enable customers to search your catalog via voice,” BJ Haberkorn, director of Amazon Alexa developer marketing, wrote in a blog post. “Once you’ve connected, your customers in the US can enjoy music from your catalog on tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices.”Playing music with a skill that’s integrated the API is as straightforward as saying, “Alexa, play songs by
from .” Skills can stream to any compatible device, or multiple Echo devices using Alexa Multi-Room Music. Additionally, users can tap song catalogs for alarms.Developers don’t need to build their own voice user interface — instead, they simply provide music metadata to Amazon on a “regular basis” and Amazon takes care of updating the voice models in the background.