The new Apple Music Voice plan that Apple introduced at its “Unleashed” occasion on Monday is inflicting some confusion. I’m right here that will help you perceive this new, cheaper possibility, which capitalizes on the facility of Apple’s sensible voice assistant, Siri (don’t snort).

Put merely, the Apple Music Voice plan is a voice control-only entry to the service’s catalog of 90 million songs. It arrives later this yr, and with it, you’ll be able to play every thing — full albums, particular person songs, Apple’s playlists; it’s all-you-can-eat Apple Music. The caveat is you need to use your voice to regulate it, and you need to play it by means of a Siri-enabled machine, similar to a HomePod Mini (now in some spiffy new colours), AirPods, or an iPhone.

What it isn’t is a payment to make use of Siri to play your personal music. If you will have tracks bought by means of or saved on iTunes, you’ll be able to nonetheless play these with the Apple Music app and management them with voice, as earlier than. What paying for this service does is add entry to the corporate’s streaming catalog for a cheaper price than its Individual or Family plans.

Apple Music Voice appears greatest suited to informal listeners who don’t spend hours rigorously curating playlists and simply need to hearken to some music on the fly. While you’ll be able to request particular songs and albums, you may as well simply say, “Hey, Siri plays some ’90s Britpop” or “Hey Siri, play something chill.” There’s additionally entry to Apple Radio.

Image: Apple

The most vital distinction between the 2 plans — past worth: one is $4.99, and one is $9.99 — is entry to the Apple Music app. With the Voice plan, you’ll be able to’t open the Apple Music app, seek for an artist or music, and choose a observe. Instead, you need to ask Siri to play the music you need.

You can use the Apple Music app to see a queue of lately performed music and ideas for utilizing Siri to regulate your music. There are additionally “suggestions based on the listener’s music preferences” that embrace restricted content material out there for playback by means of the app, according to Apple. Apple hasn’t shared how precisely this can look or work but, so we’ll have to attend for the service to roll out to check it.

The cheaper plan additionally doesn’t allow you to create your personal playlists, handle your playback queue, obtain songs to your library, scroll the lyrics in your iPhone or iPad, or stream from any third-party audio system (similar to Google Nest Hub, which does help the total Apple Music plan). It additionally gained’t play among the higher-quality audio codecs out there in Apple Music, similar to lossless and spatial audio.

You can use Apple AirPlay to play music by means of any and all AirPlay 2-enabled audio system you may need — which makes this plan a notch higher than Amazon’s related voice-only music streaming service. That plan — the Amazon Music Unlimited Single Device Plan — prices $3.99 to entry Amazon Music’s catalog, however you’ll be able to solely play it on one Echo or Fire TV machine.

What’s distinctive about each these voice streaming plans is you could simply purchase a sensible speaker — an Amazon Echo or a HomePod Mini — plug it in, and ask it to play music. (You can actually say, “Hey Siri, start my Apple Music Voice trial” and be up and operating.) This takes away plenty of friction from getting going with streaming music, offering a simple set-up for somebody who’s not very techie. It will in all probability make an amazing reward in your dad and mom this Christmas in case you’re bored with listening to The Eagles on their FM radio each time you go to.