Apple on Wednesday introduced a new iPod music player which the company said can speak song titles, artists and playlist names to users.

The 4-gigabyte iPod shuffle is Apple's first music player that has the talking feature and also "the world's smallest music player at nearly half of the size of the previous model," the company said.

The new model is significantly smaller than a AA battery, holds up to 1,000 songs and is easier to use with all of the controls conveniently located on the earphone cord.

"The amazingly small new iPod shuffle takes a revolutionary approach to how you listen to your music by talking to you, also making it the first iPod shuffle with playlists," Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of iPod product marketing, said in a statement.

The new music player can speak 14 languages including English, Chinese, French and German. It is priced at 79 dollars in the U.S. market.

(Xinhua News Agency March 12, 2009)