In the world of smart speakers and digital assistants, Alexa and Google continue to lead the way, with firms like Apple trailing behind, striving to catch up. These companies are pushing the boundaries of modern technology in an attempt to give the closest thing to “AI” in a world where it still has a long way to go. As a result, you’ll have a product that has a significant positive impact on your daily life. Even when it comes to the most basic of activities, such as listening to music.
Except, no matter how intelligent these assistants become, they still lack some basic capabilities that you’d think someone would have thought of by now. Like the ability to shift or transfer what you’re listening to another location/speaker. You can, for example, summon music with a simple voice command and spread it across the house on many speakers.
If you start at one speaker and then wish to move to another, you used to have to stop the music and start it again on the next Alexa device. This implies you’ll lose your place in the track you’re listening to, or you’ll have to start over with a brand new one, even if you’re liking the one you’re listening to (ie, Pandora and other platforms similar to it).
Now, this isn’t an issue–finally. Amazon has delivered a new update to Alexa devices that allow you to move from one location to the next. It isn’t as simple as “Alexa, move to [name of speaker]” for whatever reason, but it isn’t so bad either. You just have to remember two commands.
- Current device/speaker: “Alexa, pause” (or “pause music”)
- Next devices/speaker: “Alexa, resume here” (or “resume music here”)
This will allow you to pause the music in one spot and resume it via another speaker (on the same account, of course) without losing your place in the song.
That wasn’t that difficult, was it, Amazon? Finally, the ability to move around the house while still listening to music. It’s a small feature, but it makes a big difference. Alexa has accomplished so much with music that something as simple as this appears to have been overlooked in the whole thought process. It’s all right now, though. Please excuse me while I return to the music I was listening to in the other room. “Alexa…”