Audio News for January 13, 2017

by | Jan 13, 2017 | Audio News

Things Alexa Cannot Yet Do – The shortfall of Alexa’s IFTT integration is the lack of any actions whatsoever. You cannot complete a task for have Alexa play a tune. You must divide every command into its own statement – no trying to get Alexa to do more than one thing at a time. There are currently no notifications, audio or visual. It would be nice if Alexa spoke the name of the person calling you, but no. Only three words wake Alexa devices: Alexa, Amazon or the name of the device – no customized wake words. There is no voice-memo function – you cannot leave messages for others in your household. Alexa does not distinguish different voices. If you have multiple Amazon devices around the house, you cannot speak to just one of them and Alexa will not stream the same music to all your Echo speakers, but you can with Google Home and Chromecast.

“This Decade Belongs to Gustavo Dudamel and His Innovative Ways” is a statement by the author of an article Can Classical Music Survive With Shedding Its Obsessions with Purism? It came about due to the current musical film La La Land, which has swept the Golden Globes for this year. It is about two young white people trying to save a black cultural product – jazz – and finding meaning in the thespian world respectively.  Its success is attributed to Hollywood’s approval of a narcissism rooted in the idea of “the white man’s burden” and self-referentialism.

The South-American conductor Dudamel inspired the popular TV series Mozart in the Jungle, and is responsible for the “popification” of classical music. What was once pop and has now become classical. Today a minuscule fraction of the world population goes to classical concerts. Only something like 8% of Americans attended a classical concert in the last year. Several orchestras have filed for bankruptcy. Purists may be the biggest enemy of the art they aim to protect. But what may benefit the purist and the experimentalist broadens the audience base, aided by innovative ways of engagement. La La Land may inspire some searches for “jazz” you know.

All Three Major Labels, Pandora & RIAA Support Hi-Res Streaming – Universal, Sony and Warner, the RIAA, and music platforms such as Pandora, Rhapsody/Napster and HD Tracks have announced their support for studio-quality hi-res audio for music streaming. All are members of the DEG (Digital Entertainment Group), which has a new Stream the Studio marketing campaign. It is aimed at millennials and promotes the benefits of hi-res compatible devices, technologies and music. Now the question is how long before these services offer premium audio tiers?

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