Alexa Now Makes It Easier For Amazon Echo To Play Songs You've Previously Heard

We all know that asking an Amazon Echo speaker powered by Alexa to play a specific artist or song is possible (among other things). Amazon has been adding some new music controls to Alexa devices that make it easier to play songs when you don't know the artist or song title. These new playback commands are perfect for users who listen to a lot of music without knowing what they are really listening to.

You now have the ability to ask for music to be played based on the last time you used Alexa for tunes. Amazon says that you can now ask Alexa to "play me a Hold Steady song I heard last month" or "Alexa, play music that I was listening to earlier today." Amazon is trying to make controlling music via Alexa more appealing to consumers since the music service itself isn’t as popular as others out there.

One catch for some music fans with Alexa devices is that they don't have the same sort of broad support for all music services as competing devices offer. Google Home is a good example that will allow users to setup multiple music services during the initial setup of the device. Amazon really wants to shoehorn Alexa users into its Amazon Music service. The new voice controls are being integrated into the Android and iOS Alexa apps as well.

Alexa has had an odd week. Alexa-powered devices began to randomly laugh, freaking out unsuspecting users. When Amazon announced the cause of the fits of random laughter, the cause was as creepy as the laughter itself. Alexa was apparently hearing the phrase "Alexa, laugh" even when it wasn't said. This flaw has now been fixed according to Amazon.