It seems like smart assistants are learning new tricks every day, from cooking microwave popcorn to helping users get flu shots.
But all those bells and whistles don’t hold a candle to the king of smart speakers: Music.
A report from data company Nielsen found that listening to music outranked every other use of smart speakers, with 90 percent of users asking their smart devices to play them tunes.
Real-time information like traffic and the weather came in second, with 81 percent of users requesting that feature from smart devices. Factual information like trivia came in third at 75 percent of users.
The overall theme is simplicity. While playing an interactive game or hearing a step-by-step recipe might be a fun novelty, the most common uses of smart speakers are the more practical and straightforward ones.
Notably absent from the top six uses: using smart home devices, like lightbulbs or thermostats.
It’s an interesting takeaway for the smart speaker world, where Amazon’s Alexa, the Google Assistant and a myriad of other smart assistants are vying to control the market. The prominence of music might give smart speakers that emphasize music a boost, like Apple’s HomePod and the Google Home Max.
Either way, smart speaker adoption is only increasing. Of those surveyed for the study, 62 percent said they had bought their smart speaker in the past six months and 45 percent said they plan to buy another device for their home.
