Amazon Echo Club

[tubemonkey]

Pandora and iHeartRadio Rank As Streaming Favorites Among Amazon Echo Users

An Alexa-enabled only device music subscription may help Amazon Music Unlimited route the competition in 2017. Yet, a new study shows dipping numbers for Spotify ahead of their IPO, and Echo users aren’t buying Music Unlimited.

Right after the holiday season, Amazon reported booming sales for Alexa-enabled devices, including the Dot and Tap. In fact, according to MusicWatch’s 15th Annual Music Survey, 14 million US consumers reported using an Echo device. Amazon also launched their Music Unlimited service late last year. However, the company has yet to report official paid subscription numbers. So, how well is the e-commerce giant’s paid subscription service faring?

Yet, only 13 percent of Echo users actually listened to Amazon Music Unlimited last year. MusicWatch’s data include paid subscriptions, trials, and account sharing. Whereas Music Unlimited only saw a 13% share, Pandora took home the grand prize. The streaming service ranked as the most-listened to streamer among Echo users with a 43% share. The numbers fall in line with a previous MusicWatch study, showing that American consumers favored Pandora over streaming video giant YouTube. iHeartRadio came in second with a 36% share, and Amazon Prime Music in third with 22%.

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Pandora and iHeartRadio Rank As Streaming Favorites Among Amazon Echo Users

I still have no desire to pay for a music service at home. My cable TV has more music than I could ever want, and I can get a lot of free music from Amazon and radio stations. I do wish my Toyota RAV4 had a satellite radio built in like my Prius C did. I had a SiriusXM subscription for it because the local radio stations play 90% commercials and useless, stupid chatter and only 10% music. But I don't really care to put an add-on satellite radio receiver in the RAV4, so I just station surf or leave the darn radio off.

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I still have no desire to pay for a music service at home. My cable TV has more music than I could ever want, and I can get a lot of free music from Amazon and radio stations. I do wish my Toyota RAV4 had a satellite radio built in like my Prius C did. I had a SiriusXM subscription for it because the local radio stations play 90% commercials and useless, stupid chatter and only 10% music. But I don't really care to put an add-on satellite radio receiver in the RAV4, so I just station surf or leave the darn radio off.

Maybe use a bluetooth speaker and stream music from your phone while driving? That's what I'm doing.
I can't see subscribing to a service either. I buy albums I want and either use my Plex server or play right off a mobile device sdcard into a bluetooth speaker. What I want iHeart for is radio and randomly playing songs. I don't mind a few ads for that.

Originally Posted by Conan46

Maybe use a bluetooth speaker and stream music from your phone while driving? That's what I'm doing.
I can't see subscribing to a service either. I buy albums I want and either use my Plex server or play right off a mobile device sdcard into a bluetooth speaker. What I want iHeart for is radio and randomly playing songs. I don't mind a few ads for that.

Unfortunately Toyota's implementation of add-on stuff like using BT with an iPhone or plugging in a USB thumbdrive or plugging in an audio cable from another device is terrible. I can easily do any of those, but it is extremely difficult and non-intuitve to get to a particular song or even album. So imagine driving off a cliff because you are constantly fiddling around with a terrible music navigation system. Toyota dropped the ball big time, IMO. It isn't worth all the hassle, and I really don't like add-on crap anyway. Having to plug in or connect another device via BT is just kluge at best. I like a clean look and a clean operation. Add-on plus Toyota radio equals major frustration and headaches. The only option I see as workable to me is to replace the radio with one that has a built in satellite receiver, but I have no desire to spend several hundred dollars to do this. I simply don't drive enough to justify the expense. I'm retired. If I worked and had to commute an hour or so per day it would be worth the expense, as it would if I drove a lot especially out in the boonies where radio stations are few and far between.

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Unfortunately Toyota's implementation of add-on stuff like using BT with an iPhone or plugging in a USB thumbdrive or plugging in an audio cable from another device is terrible. I can easily do any of those, but it is extremely difficult and non-intuitve to get to a particular song or even album. So imagine driving off a cliff because you are constantly fiddling around with a terrible music navigation system. Toyota dropped the ball big time, IMO. It isn't worth all the hassle, and I really don't like add-on crap anyway. Having to plug in or connect another device via BT is just kluge at best. I like a clean look and a clean operation. Add-on plus Toyota radio equals major frustration and headaches. The only option I see as workable to me is to replace the radio with one that has a built in satellite receiver, but I have no desire to spend several hundred dollars to do this. I simply don't drive enough to justify the expense. I'm retired. If I worked and had to commute an hour or so per day it would be worth the expense, as it would if I drove a lot especially out in the boonies where radio stations are few and far between.

Yes, driving off of a cliff would definitely be bad My wife's new Ford is equally bad at that stuff. What I do in my older car is leave a bluetooth speaker in it. It comes in handy when I've been in a doctor's waiting room or such, listening to music on my phone with ear buds, then go to the car and can continue the song or album by just switching on the speaker. My phone only has to be connected once with the bluetooth speaker and it will auto-connect when the speaker is turned on every time.

Originally Posted by Conan46

Yes, driving off of a cliff would definitely be bad My wife's new Ford is equally bad at that stuff. What I do in my older car is leave a bluetooth speaker in it. It comes in handy when I've been in a doctor's waiting room or such, listening to music on my phone with ear buds, then go to the car and can continue the song or album by just switching on the speaker. My phone only has to be connected once with the bluetooth speaker and it will auto-connect when the speaker is turned on every time.

My iPhone was paired to my RAV4 radio a long time ago and it reconnects every time I start the engine. I use the RAV4 audio system as a handsfree phone and it can also read text messages to me. It does a good job with those tasks. But it gets confused when it comes to navigating songs on the iPhone or on a USB thumb drive. But I only own a few dozen songs (digital or otherwise) anyway, so I really don't desire to listen to them every time I drive. I never invested much in songs except for a few years decades ago when I owned a lot of cassette tapes during my teenage years. I guess the frustration of 8-track and cassette tapes degrading so quickly really turned me off to buying songs, and even years later when CDs and MP3s became standard I never regained a desire to buy songs. But since my music tastes evolve over time its probably is a good idea for me not to waste money on songs.

[WT Sharpe]

My Tap finally got the new system upgrade. It's now a "Tap if you want to -- or not."

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

My Tap finally got the new system upgrade. It's now a "Tap if you want to -- or not."

Mine should be here around Friday. How is it handling background noise with one mic? Does it hear you over music playing?
Thanks.

[DreamWriter]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

My Tap finally got the new system upgrade. It's now a "Tap if you want to -- or not."

My Tap upgrade came this morning. I just went into the Alexa app, chose Settings, selected the Tap, and enabled Hands-free mode.

Originally Posted by Conan46

Mine should be here around Friday. How is it handling background noise with one mic? Does it hear you over music playing?
Thanks.

My Tap is in a small bedroom without an Echo or Dot nearby. It hears my commands over moderately loud music just fine.

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by DreamWriter

My Tap is in a small bedroom without an Echo or Dot nearby. It hears my commands over moderately loud music just fine.

Great! Makes you wonder if all those mics on the Echo is overkill. And Google Home only has 3 mics.

[tubemonkey]

Amazon’s Alexa gains more personality through special Speechcon expressive words

Amazon has added support for Speechcon words and phrases to Alexa. Speechcons are exclamations that will be pronounced more expressively by Alexa. There are nearly 200 different words, from abracadabra to zoinks, that Alexa Skill developers can choose to include in their Alexa responses. You can see the full list of words, and hear what Alexa sounds like saying each word, here on Amazon’s developer site. This new ability should add a bit of fun and emotion to Alexa’s usual monotone pronunciations. I’d say nanu nanu and dynomite are good ones.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Conan46

Great! Makes you wonder if all those mics on the Echo is overkill. And Google Home only has 3 mics.

Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.

[Blossom]

Ask Alexa to sing you a love song then watch her. It's great.

Sent from my XT1528

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Conan46

Great! Makes you wonder if all those mics on the Echo is overkill. And Google Home only has 3 mics.

I don't know how Echo would have fared in the same situation, but at the Google presenter's table at best buy, google home woud not respond while playing loud music, and the presenter had to tap the top to get it to stop.
I wonder if the dot's issue is that the speaker and mics are so close together. Perhaps that is why Amazon seems to so strongly recommended an external speaker for music with the dot?

The Dot has a small, mediocre speaker. The Dot's speaker is good for voice and okay for playing lower volume music (depending on genre) up to perhaps volume 5 or 6. It was not designed to rock out to heavy metal. If you want to turn up the volume on a Dot and rock out, then you need to connect it to a decent external speaker, otherwise it is more than adequate for the tasks it was designed to accomplish. Since the Dot costs less than 1/3 the cost of an Echo, and was never designed as a home stereo replacement, the speaker is about what we should expect it to be.