Back in February, I reported on my attempts to get Alexa to play the albums in our music collection. I\u2019d found the following:<\/p>\n
Coverage:<\/strong> about 80% of our albums were present in the Amazon Music Unlimited library.<\/p>\n Specifying Discs and tracks:<\/strong> for albums consisting of more than one disc, there appears to be no way of specifying that Alexa should start playing Disc 2 as opposed to Disc 1; and, similarly, there\u2019s no way of getting Alexa to play a particular track number.<\/p>\n Voice Recognition:<\/strong> Alexa couldn\u2019t recognise about 10% of the Artist\/Title combinations even though I had checked that they were actually available in Amazon\u2019s Music Unlimited library.<\/p>\n Since then I\u2019ve been using Alexa and Amazon Music Unlimited to listen to newly issued albums reviewed in the Guardian\/Observer newspapers, and now have a further substantial set of experience to compare with my original findings. The first thing to say is that being able to listen to complete albums, as opposed to just samples of each track from Amazon on my laptop (as I have been doing previously), is, obviously, a far more rewarding experience; and to be able to listen to a range of new releases from start to finish, regardless of whether or not they suit one\u2019s innate preferences, is a real luxury. Most I will never listen to again \u2013 and some I have cut short because I really didn\u2019t like them; but there are a few which I\u2019ve really liked and have made a note of at the back of our \u2018Sounds for Alexa\u2019 book. At least I now feel a bit more in touch with what sort of music is being produced these days.<\/p>\n Now, to get back to the topics I covered in my earlier findings; below are my further observations on each of the points:<\/p>\n Coverage:<\/strong> Since last February I\u2019ve checked out eleven lots of review sections comprising write-ups of 121 albums. Fourteen of these albums were issued in CD format only, and all the other 107 albums were available in Amazon in MP3 format. All but nine of these 107 were advertised as being available for streaming or available to \u2018Listen with your Echo\u2019 (the latter being the Alexa device); and of these nine, six did actually play through the Echo device.\u00a0 Of the three that didn\u2019t, two would play only samples (Bob Dylan\u2019s \u2018Triplicate\u2019, and The Unthanks\u2019 \u2018The songs and poems of Molly Drake\u2019); and for the other one (Vecchi Requiem by Graindelavoix\/Schmetzer) Alexa repeated \u201cVecchi Requiem\u201d perfectly but said she was unable to find any album by that name. Given that only three items were actually unavailable, I conclude that a lot of the new albums that are being issued in digital format are available in the Amazon Music Unlimited service.<\/p>\n Specifying Discs and tracks:<\/strong> It still appears to be the case that it\u2019s not possible to specify that Alexa play the 2nd<\/sup> disk in a two disk album, nor to play a particular track number. To get round the multiple disks problem, a number of people in the Reddit noticeboard suggest creating a playlist in which the two discs are listed separately. As for the track number, Alexa will<\/u> step through the tracks if you keep saying \u2018next track\u2019; but, if you really do want a particular track played, the best way to achieve that is to use the name of the track when requesting it \u2013 both of the following worked for me: \u00a0\u2018Play Kashmir by led Zeppelin\u2019 and \u2018Play Cromwell by Darren Hayman\u2019.<\/p>\n Voice Recognition:<\/strong> Of the 121 albums I checked out, Amazon claimed that 98 of them were available to play through the Echo, whereas, in fact, I could only get 85 of them to play. For eleven of the other thirteen albums, Alexa just couldn\u2019t understand what I was requesting; and in the remaining two cases, Alexa a) insisted on playing \u201cRock with the Hot 8 Brass Band\u201d instead of \u201cOn the spot\u201d by the Hot 8 Brass band, and b) played Mozart\u2018s Gran Partita by the London Philharmonic instead of by the London Symphony Orchestra. Turning to the 85 albums that did play through the Echo, it was significant that only 59 of them played at the first time of asking. For the other 26, I had to repeat the request at least twice and as many as six times (these details are included in this Recognition Analysis spreadsheet<\/a>). Naturally I was trying out all sorts of combinations of all or part of the particular album title and artist. After much trial and error I have taken to first asking for both the album title and the artist (play me X by Y); then, if that doesn\u2019t work, to ask for the album title on its own (or even just parts of the album title \u2013 for example, 1729 for the album title \u201cCarnevale 1729\u201d). Finally, as a last resort, to just ask for the Artist. This strategy proved successful in all but 3 of the 26 instances that didn\u2019t play at the first time of asking. These figures indicate that Alexa\u2019s voice recognition capabilities haven\u2019t improved much since my last write-up in February. This view is reinforced by my (undocumented) experiences of trying to get Alexa to tell me about various golf, rugby and cricket events. Her responses have usually been either about a completely different event or just that she doesn\u2019t know. Perhaps I\u2019m not asking the questions in the right way….. at least Alexa is usually able to provide a weather forecast at the first time of asking. In her defence, I should mention that my son seems to have no trouble in adding all sorts of outlandish things to our Alexa shopping bag (which, I should add, we don’t use – Alexa just provides it if you want to put things into it).<\/p>\n From this summary of my recent experiences with Alexa, it seems that little has changed. Whilst Alexa\u2019s voice recognition capabilities don\u2019t seem to have improved much, the usefulness of the device compared with having stacks of CDs around, is undiminished. So much so, in fact, that we have replaced our last remaining CD player, which was in the conservatory, with\u00a0 another Echo device; and we\u2019ve upgraded to Amazon Music Unlimited for 10 devices at \u00a39.99 a month.<\/p>\n There are undoubtedly many other uses that we could be putting Alexa to \u2013 the weekly email from Amazon always suggests several new things that one can ask her or get her to do. We haven\u2019t really followed any of them up. Perhaps I\u2019ll get to printing out the email each week and putting it next to the echo as a prompt. Or maybe I won\u2019t\u00a0 – we\u2019ll see.\u00a0 One thing\u2019s for sure: what with all our CDs in the loft, and no stand-alone CD player, Alexa is going to be with us for the indefinite future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in February, I reported on my attempts to get Alexa to play the albums in our music collection. I\u2019d found the following: Coverage: about 80% of our albums were present in the Amazon Music Unlimited library. Specifying Discs and … Continue reading