Alexa can now play the top songs in a city and similar tracks

Amazon Alexa can now play music that’s popular in a given city through a new feature called “Local Popularity.” That means you can ask Alexa to play the “top songs in Los Angeles” or the “hits in Tokyo,” and the assistant will play different tracks every day, the company says. The goal with the addition is to aid in music discovery – by allowing users to find out about new artists and songs they may not have otherwise heard of, had they only followed country-wide top charts or playlists.

The new addition is one of two updates to Amazon Alexa’s music capabilities today, both of which are only available for Amazon Music Unlimited and Prime Music customers.

The other, called “Play more like this,” allows Alexa users to adjust their play queue in real-time by asking to hear more songs like the one that’s currently playing. This feature can also be used to play similar songs to any other artists or track, as an alternative to starting a radio-based playlist.

For example, you could say “Alexa, play songs similar to Taylor Swift,” or “Alexa, play songs like ‘Poker Face’,” to hear more music that’s in the same genre or style as what you’ve requested.

The two features’ launch follows another Amazon Music update for Alexa from earlier this week that now allows you to wake up to music alarms – an option that may especially appeal to Echo Spot owners, given the clock/speaker is seems best designed to sit in the bedroom.