Amazon are staying ahead of the curve in a lot of ways this year.

From making Black Friday into a global event, to terrifying competitors with their new furniture brand, to spending staggering(ly crazy) amounts of money on original television series, Amazon really are on top of their game at the moment.

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But in amongst all that innovation and new technology there’s still some space for some quaint traditions. Like Christmas, for example.

It goes without saying that there are few Western holidays which cause quite so much ruckus. And one of the most important elements of a English-speaking Christmas is cheesy pop music.

Amazon is ensuring that its customers can get their hands on the top Christmas tunes in more ways than ever with their Echo speakers this year.

Alexa’s new festive vocabulary

Earlier in the year, Amazon introduced some ‘unique’ options for chatting with Alexa. Users could ask the smart speaker’s chatty little AI assistant to play ‘music for hooking up’ and even ‘music for making babies’ (as long as they didn’t actually mention sex.) However, this time around they’ve made things even more sanitary and turned the holiday filter way up.

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Alexa will now have new playlists for all kinds of holiday-related activities. To think, we now live in a day and age where there are different playlists available for both wrapping and unwrapping presents!

  • “Alexa, play me some songs for wrapping gifts” or “Alexa, play songs for unwrapping gifts”
  • “Alexa, play some music for a holiday party”
  • “Alexa, play music for Christmas morning”
  • “Alexa, play me music for lighting the menorah”
  • “Alexa, play music for drinking eggnog”
  • “Alexa, play songs for decorating the Christmas tree”
  • “Alexa, play some music for hanging ornaments”
  • “Alexa, play music for baking Christmas cookies”

Unfortunately, these new utterances are currently only available to customers in the USA. Still, it’s safe to say, Alexa is going to be a festive friend to everyone who can use these utterances this year!

Amazon’s insight into Christmas music

While Alexa’s new utterances might be slightly gimmicky, one thing that’s a little more interesting is the insight Amazon has gleaned into its customers listening habits since the launch of Amazon Music Unlimited and Amazon Prime Music.

Both services offer on-demand music. The latter grants listeners access to up to one million songs and albums. Amazon Music Unlimited is even bigger, putting an incredible forty million songs at the tip of listeners’ fingers.

Because this music comes from Amazon directly, the company can obtain data about what customers enjoy listening to.

While there are probably all kinds of interesting insights they can glean from this data, today we’ll focus on some Christmas insights.

In both 2016 and 2017, Wham’s “Last Christmas, I Gave You My Heart” has been the most requested song by lyric. This is a feature of the Amazon Echo where listeners can ask Alexa to play a specific song, even if they don’t remember the name of it, just by singing a few lyrics. While it’s not definitive evidence, this could prove that ‘Last Christmas, I Gave You My Heart’ has some of the most memorable lyrics of all the popular Christmas tunes. Probably because it gets played so often!

The data also found that Amazon Music listeners tend to listen to festive music most often on Sundays.

In 2015, 2016, and even 2017, one of the most popular Christmas albums was Michael Bublé’s Christmas. However, more surprisingly, a Capella quintet Pentatonix were alongside him with their cover album That’s Christmas To Me.

The data was also able to point to the most festive cities in the world. Seattle, Houston, San Diego, New York and Chicago requested more holiday music on Alexa than any others since the Amazon Music service launched!

Getting an Amazon Echo before Christmas

If all this sounds immensely appealing, then it might be time to consider purchasing an Amazon Echo before Christmas. Thankfully, there’s a little-known shopping festival called Black Friday between this article’s publication and then.

As mentioned above, Amazon are seriously invested in Black Friday. As a result, they’ve offered some great discounts on some of their products. Those discounts are already available around the world, offering huge discounts on Amazon Echo products. Currently their Echo Dot speaker is 30% off. In addition, the brand new Amazon Echo Plus can be purchased at 21% off its normal pricing. Finally, the latest edition of the standard Echo is 22% off at the moment.

In addition, a three month membership to Amazon Music Unlimited is currently $0.99 or £0.99!

If you fancy injecting a bit of Christmas fun into your Alexa, there’s never been a better time to do it.