Amazon has launched Amazon Music "activities" for its Alexa.

What does that mean? Here's the background: Last year, Amazon launched its Amazon Music Unlimited service, giving people the ability to stream music from their phone, computer, and Amazon Echo device. Now, Amazon wants to give Amazon Music listeners - who prefer to use the service by asking Alexa through an Echo - more ways to request a song. It's launching new voice controls.

These new voice controls are "specifically focused on activities" -- hence the announcement that are are new Amazon Music "activities" for Alexa. Over the past few months, Amazon noticed listeners asking for music that's good for activities like meditation, partying, working out, and even more unusual, specific activities like Irish dancing, crossfit workouts, brunch, cleaning, massages, etc. 

Anyway, as a result, Amazon Music now supports over 500 "activity utterances". Think of these as an Amazon Music skill for Alexa. You can now request music for everything from sleeping to relaxing. Amazon said a quarter of all music requests are for bedtime music. You can even ask Alexa to play specific genres for activities, like jazz for dinner, pop for cooking, and classical for reading.

This new feature is now rolling out in the UK. You do not have to enable it like a traditional Alexa skill. However, it's exclusive to Prime Music and Amazon Music Unlimited listeners.