Apple has an expanded role for Siri.
The tech giant confirmed to BuzzFeed News on Thursday that its new Apple TV will allow Siri commands for Apple Music. That means using your Siri Remote on the new Apple TV and barking commands like "Play The Weeknd's latest album" or "Play Adele's new song," will have the set-top streaming box rushing to carry out your wishes, just as it will for video requests.
By extending Apple TV's universal search — via Siri — to include music, users can essentially turn the streaming device into a voice-controlled personalized jukebox. Pretty cool...especially for music lovers.
Perhaps the added feature will also help Apple Music to close the gap between it and Spotify. Currently, Apple Music has about 6.5 million subscribers — far less than that of Spotify's 20 million-plus paying subscribers and that's not counting the 55 million free listeners of the music streaming service.
While Siri-enabled commands for music via the new Apple TV certainly helps as an added wrinkle, at $149 (for 32 GB of storage) and $199 (64 GB), the new unit doesn't have one feature that its cheaper competitors do and that's the ability to support 4K streaming.
The Roku 4 and Amazon Fire TV, for instance, are priced at $129.99 and $99.99, respectively, and boast support for 4K streaming.
Perhaps Apple TV can add that as an update, the same way it's doing with enabling Siri commands for music on the set-top streaming box. The fourth-generation Apple TV can be ordered online right now with deliveries set for Friday, October 30.
