Is Alexa Still Radio’s Friend?

With the latest upgrade, Alexa is lobbying to replace your station’s music director.

OK, that’s a little over the top.

However the software is now allowing a back and forth with device owners who are Amazon Prime or Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers. The goal is to create for them more personalized playlists.  Additional dialogue is planned for the future to further the customization.

So with these added skills, is Alexa still radio’s friend?

 

I Tried It Out On the First Day

I gave this a try yesterday (12/06/18) with a request for a playlist.

When asked for a genre preference I said “country” and received the promise that there was “plenty of great country” for me.

I was then asked, “How about something more contemporary?”

After a brief music sample I was asked, “Will that work?”

My “yes” response got me this:

“Here’s your playlist.”

Kane Brown/Lose It

Morgan Wallen/FGL/Up Down

Maren Morris/Rich

Keith Urban/Carrie Underwood/What if I fall

Lady A/Heartbreak

Kelsea Ballerini/Miss Me More

Dylan Scott/Hooked

Luke Bryan/Move

 

The Pros and Cons

If this was an actual sequence on our station, we’d no doubt fire up our software and go directly to the rules page.

However the play list did live up to its promise of “contemporary” with a bonus of tempo. The era sequence was roughly

Current

Recurrent

Current

Recent Gold

Recurrent

Current

Recurrent

Recent Gold

 

I stopped the playlist at this point so I don’t know when (or if) a ballad would play. But clearly the 8-song playlist wasn’t terrible.

Something however was clearly missing.

 

May You Never Hear These Words

So I asked, “Alexa – do you know any great disc jockeys?”

Her response: “Sorry. I’m not sure about that.”

Hopefully none of your listeners at a Listener Advisory Board would answer the same way.

Year after year A&O&B’s annual “Roadmap,” our online listener study, shows the importance of talent. “Plays the best music” has historically been most important to 25-54 country P1’s when choosing their favorite country station. But next, just a few percentage points behind are “DJs that sound like friends” and “makes me feel good when I listen.”

As far as country morning radio listening is concerned only 22% of our 25-54’s said they listen mainly for the music with the rest saying they listen primarily for the DJs (15%) or the combination of music and DJs (63%).

In January 2018, 24% of our 25-54 year old Roadmap respondents said they either own or, within 6 months, plan to own a voice activated assistant. About half of those who already owned a smart speaker said they had listened to their favorite country station via smart speaker.

That’s a good thing.

And certainly we finesse our music logs to our advantage.

While any entertainment device should be on our radar, these new skills position Alexa as more of a direct competitor to Pandora, Spotify, and Apple Music.

Regardless, one of our biggest competitive advantages remains our entertaining, transparent, real, relatable, accessible, heart-and-humor talent. And one of our great (perhaps greatest) industry missions is to continually discover, develop and nurture said talent who are exclusively available on the terrestrial band – ours in particular.

Alexa may not know where to find “great disc jockeys” but hopefully our listeners know that they are on our station.

So yeah, Alexa is still our friend for making our stations available with a simple request.

Now it’s incumbent on us to deliver a product worthy of a friend’s actions.

 

Related:

Back When Radio Was Good

Episodic Content from a Bunch of Bananas

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