[jarcher]

So as we all well know now, streaming music has become the predominant source at least of revenue for the music industry (at least for record labels - maybe touring for bigger acts). Now the new thing on people's radar seems to be AI driven or at least assisted music. Ie anything from barking commands at Alexa to predictive music curation / delivery from Pandora to Spotify and beyond.

So some general questions :

1) How much do you listen to streaming vs owned content?
2) Do you use or have any interest in voice control for equipment control?
3) Do you have any interest in AI driven music selection or curation?

I'll go first :

1) Despite having a very large digital music collection, I primarily use Tidal for both ease of use and to discover new music

2) Not so much. Maybe if I started using it more frequently and it was very accurate.

3) Maybe - but the crank in me is skeptical about the choice quality (including being a music snob and too many repeats like Pandora), agenda behind the recommendations (i.e. narrowing offerings for commercial reasons), and last of all, privacy (how much more about us do we want tracked and traded).

Looking forward to folks feedback.

Here's the article that provoked this thought process :

https://apple.news/AMNioeibVR4OHYrMHYMVooQ

[sebrof]

1) How much do you listen to streaming vs owned content?
2) Do you use or have any interest in voice control for equipment control?
3) Do you have any interest in AI driven music selection or curation?

1) I listen to Amazon Music Unlimited on a table radio while I work. Any time I listen to my stereo I listen to CDs or Records.
2) I really like my Amazon Echo Dot for listening while I work. When I get tired of whatever I am listening to I just tell it to shuffle a different artist, or play a specific album. No need to stop work and pick up my phone or whatever. It understands whatever I say, and 90%+ of what I ask for is on Amazon Music.
3) No

[decal]

Call me a luddite.   Okay, you're a luddite.  (Sorry, couldn't resist!!!)

1. I still listen to LPs,CDs and radio.
2. Not interested.
3. Not interested.

[JohnR]

1. Streaming now... probably about 90% at the moment. In fact sometimes I stream albums I already have because it's "right there" in the interface.
2. Never thought about it, but probably would if it worked properly.
3. I've liked Pandora when I've used it, so I'd probably answer yes as a way to discover new artists but it has to be integrated into the music player so when I find something I like I can add it to e.g. favorites and then continue to explore.

Not thought about the privacy angle but am not finding myself troubled by it... I'm not sure what anyone could sell me based on that info... Juilliard Quartet T-shirts?  (Now streaming Verdi and Sibelius String Quartets from the "rap intensive" Tidal... )

[macrojack]

1 - I stream FM radio nowadays. No other music service.

2 - Voice control isn't needed. Remote control does what little controlling I employ --- muting mostly.

3 - I have not found AI driven suggestions too helpful at all. In fact, they can be overbearing. Just think about Amazon providing product opportunities years after you have fulfilled that need. We bought my daughter-in-law a Dremel set 7 years ago for Christmas. Yesterday I received an email full of suggestions for new Dremel products and accessories. Every morning I get some kind of push from Amazon. Frankly, I get tired of being pestered. Life in the American marketplace reminds me of being besieged by beggars on the street in a third world country. So, on second thought, I will refuse any offers of AI assistance.

[charmerci]

1. I have everything (10K+ songs) on my hard drive and just put it on shuffle. (At 3 minutes/song, that's 500 hours of music and at 8 hours/day, I don't have to hear the same song for 2 months.)


2. I imagine it will eventually be so cheap that every component will have this feature.


3. Nah. Most of my favorite songs come from album cuts from old/classic albums. I just want to hear those albums and make my own decisions.

[mcgsxr]

1 - 0% streaming from the outside world.  100% streaming from my ~50K library.  I have spent about all I will on content, and am looking to maximize my enjoyment of my library.
 
2 - 0% interest in voice commands.

3 - some interest in AI.  My buddy loves how iTunes can use Genius to create playlists.  I would be interested in such a service for my library, but am not aware of any for Logitech Media Server.

[WC]

1.) Streaming from phone at work and around the house, but mainly podcasts. Internal streaming to my stereo from my music server.
2.) Maybe, if it works much better than Siri does now.
3.) Could care less. I just look through my library and pick something to play.

[sebrof]

I am not a gadget or cutting edge guy at all, but I kinda stumbled into the Amazon Echo Dot and think it's really cool, and I have become a bit of a homer.

2. Never thought about it, but probably would if it worked properly.

2. I imagine it will eventually be so cheap that every component will have this feature.

2.) Maybe, if it works much better than Siri does now.

The Echo Dot is $50.
It works pretty much flawlessly, and understands what I say darn near almost all the time. I just speak and it hears and does, no need to face it or yell at it or any of that stuff. I believe the Google product is similar. I don't use Siri for anything so I don't know how that compares.

2 - 0% interest in voice commands.

I had no interest either until I used it. "Shuffle Frank Sinatra" is a whole lot easier than...well, a whole lot easier than pretty much anything except thinking about Frank Sinatra.

[JLM]

1.)  I only stream occasionally on my main rig, more so on the A/V system via satellite TV, and occasionally from my Logitech UE smart radio when I have the urge to be in the living room.

2.)  Voice control - no.  I'm leery how well it would work while music is playing or in a crowd and personally I'm a visual learner (weird for an audiophile I suppose), so I find visual searches easier than recalling artist/composer/conductor/composition names.

3.)  AI music selection/curation - no.  Pandora bores me horribly.  Amazon recommendations are only OK.  I'm old school, again leery, and a luddite (so allergic to too much unnecessary technology). 


One of my favorite books is called "Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club".  It's a series of essays raging against the pointless application of technology.

[rif]

Humorously related to 2), from the hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy

The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.

[jarcher]

Thanks folks for the feedback so far. This is of personal AND professional interest being on the audio sales side of  things as well.  I remember almost 2 years back one of my customers saying how surprised he was about how much he enjoyed and used his wife's birthday present : an Alexa.   He didn't really use it to control or choose music, but ever since then it got me to thinking  as it was such a hot topic in the consumer electronics world. Once Alexa devices became the top selling electronic on Amazon all people seemed to be able to talk about was about how to copy or integrate it.

[brj]

1) Big rig - 100% owned.  Secondary system - mostly owned, but experimenting with streaming
2) Experimenting with voice control via an Echo Dot streaming Amazon Music to a bluetooth AptX capable device for digital coax output to my secondary system.  I like it enough that I'll continue with it, but not for every use case.
3) Interest?  Sure.  Would it be a discriminating factor in a purchase or the dominant means of listening to music... I'm not there yet.

Expanding (1) - I like to control my own music and prefer not to have an Internet connection dependency for my listening enjoyment.  I have Amazon Prime for other reasons, and for music exploration, I'm content to use Amazon Music for music discovery on the occasional basis that I'm not pulling from my own library.  If I find something I like, I buy it.  I'm not tempted to pay for the high-resolution version of Tidal.

To elaborate on (2)....

I set up my Alexa based interface initially to prototype the idea for my parents.  For them, it's brilliant.  So much so that I'm going look at building them a separate music system around it.  (I'm still noodling, but I'm thinking of JBL LSR305 powered speakers with a Bluetooth capable DAC/pre-amp.)  They didn't grow up with electronics the way I did, and despite multiple iterations over the years, no system has been simple enough to completely avoid tech support calls.

For my personal parental prototype implementation, I have the Echo Dot connect to a (refurbished) Belkin SongStream HD which connects via digital coax to the LIO that currently anchors my office system.  Usually I have Roon (optional using HQPlayer) feeding the LIO and absolutely love that interface, but as I'm not usually doing critical listening in this configuration, the advantages of voice control are worth the reduction in fidelity that result from both the lower resolution of the Amazon music library and from the quality of the Belkin itself and its digital connection.  (Though that part could surely be improved upon, I'm sure.)  Note that I tell Alexa to output at max volume and then adjust the volume on my LIO as needed, so that I'm not dropping any bits.

The voice control is more convenient than I expected.  If the phone rings, I can say "Alexa stop" faster than I could ever find a remote - faster than I can pick up the phone and accept the call even.  Other situations where the room is dark are also prime for voice control, even if you know your remote by feel, as its often more about finding the remote than pushing the buttons.  Think critical listening with the lights are out, listening in a bedroom as you fall asleep, etc..  Also, voice control is truly universal - anyone can control the system without knowing a thing about your particular remote or system.

As for caveats...

I have to know what I want to play to use the voice control, at least at the genre level.  Alexa is growing, but at the moment, it's knowledge of genres is limited.  It knows "baroque" vs. merely "classical", for example, but "acoustic guitar" isn't recognized.  I'm sure this limitation will eventually disappear.

Also, I'm going to have to implement a Alexa compatible IR interface so that I can control the LIO via voice command.  (John Chapman - and his son, I believe - were working on a BT interface which would serve the LIO as well as his other TAP based systems, but that's been on the back-burner for a while.)  Having voice control for music selection and playback control but not for volume/power on-off control breaks the paradigm in a rather awkward manner.  Fortunately, there are quite a few Alexa compatible IR blasters out there, however, so this shouldn't be too hard to implement.  (Logitech Harmony, AnyMote, Bond, etc..  I just haven't had time to research them yet.)

Security.  I'm very cautious about putting things on my home network that have a cloud interface.  Whether you happen to like the Apple ecosystem or not, I favor Siri in this regard because Apple enforces the use of encryption, sets security standards, and certifies the devices at some level.  They've also been the strongest defenders of such protections in court.  (Amazon caved in a lawsuit recently vs. a police department that requested audio transcripts from an Alexa capable device.)  Alas, Siri isn't currently as advanced as Alexa in daily use, so that's a compromise that you have to consider, though one where the balance will certainly change over time as both systems evolve.  At the moment, I turn off the microphone button on the Echo Dot when I'm not using it.  To Amazon's credit, this is a hard switch and not a software accessible digital switch, so it's a good protection, but it does become less convenient as a result.

One brief note relative to (3) above... I love the "radio" feature of Roon that picks other music of a similar flavor to what I last selected manually.  Roon's version of the feature could definitely be improved and AI is one method of doing so.  (People get very wrapped up in the idea of "AI" to the point where it's become a buzzword.  In many cases, AI can be thought of as a fancy multi-dimensional curve fit (or response surface).  It's become so effective because people are figuring out better ways to create those fits and feeding them via truly massive data sets.)

[witchdoctor]

I really like just picking up the remote of Fire TV and saying "play ______" and it just starts playing. I also like the various stations.

[witchdoctor]

I am not a gadget or cutting edge guy at all, but I kinda stumbled into the Amazon Echo Dot and think it's really cool, and I have become a bit of a homer.

The Echo Dot is $50.
It works pretty much flawlessly, and understands what I say darn near almost all the time. I just speak and it hears and does, no need to face it or yell at it or any of that stuff. I believe the Google product is similar. I don't use Siri for anything so I don't know how that compares.
I had no interest either until I used it. "Shuffle Frank Sinatra" is a whole lot easier than...well, a whole lot easier than pretty much anything except thinking about Frank Sinatra.

try "Play Frank Sinatra Station" and see how you like it too, I think their algorithm is brilliant.