Why must I pay an Apple Music subscription to ask Alexa to play playlists?

Hi,

You need an Apple Music subscription to use Alexa Play Apple Music with Alexa – Apple Support (UK)

Apple Music is a subscription service and the Music app is use to play your music. The music app like it predecessor iTunes helps you manage your music without the need for a subscription.

Jim

Your purchased songs are yours. That doesn't mean that Amazon's Echo devices and services have a lot of local storage, or are set up to make it easy for you to play music that you own. The Echo devices are centered around cloud / online services, including Amazon Music (though last time I looked, there was a way to cross-link an Echo with an Apple Music subscription).

Apparently Amazon once let you upload your purchased songs to their servers, but no longer lets you do that. (I guess they didn't want to pay storage and network bills for something that didn't directly make them money.)

https://www.techhive.com/article/583189/how-to-play-music-you-own-on-an-amazon-echo.html

Your iPhone will happily play music that you purchased from the iTunes Store, from the Amazon MP3 Store, or on CDs. However, if you bought the music through some retailer other than Apple, iTunes / Finder synchronization is the only "official" way of getting the purchased music onto your iPhone.