“Alexa, play...”
Learn how artists can utilize Alexa voice features to engage fans across both Amazon Music and Amazon.com.
Learn how artists can utilize Alexa voice features to engage fans across both Amazon Music and Amazon.com.
Who—or more appropriately, what—is Alexa?
Alexa is best known as the voice (and brain) behind the Amazon Echo smart speaker and is integrated with hundreds of other devices including Sonos, Garmin, Denon, Bose, and more.
Using just your voice, you can ask Alexa to control your music, get the news, check the weather, set alarms, and control smart home devices such as lights, outlets, and locks. Alexa can tell you about upcoming concerts, get directions, find local restaurants and answer your questions. There’s no shortage of questions to ask.
Amid all of that, “Alexa, play music” remains one of the top customer requests.
Artist follow
This is one of the most impactful (and easy) campaigns you can run on your socials, especially leading up to a new release. Followers of your artist page on Amazon Music are the first to be notified when you release new music that’s been pitched and other exciting news. Simply tell your fans to ask “Alexa, follow [Artist Name] on Amazon Music”. Boom. Done.
Like plumbing, metadata is not exciting, but extremely important. For instance, accurate metadata helps Alexa to recognize what the customer is asking for. Metadata helps Alexa to understand if a song is happy, good for working out, or even to recall your most recently played song. We maintain this metadata for millions of tracks, so your fans can more naturally connect with your music.
How music is delivered to us has a big impact as well. With that in mind, you can make sure Alexa’s able to respond to requests on your release date with some of these best practices:
How music is delivered to us has a big impact as well. With that in mind, you can make sure Alexa’s able to respond to requests on your release date with some of these best practices:
Deliver your music early
Alexa needs time to learn about your music. Because of this, music delivered at the last minute is more likely to be problematic. In general, we recommend making sure your music is delivered to Amazon at least seven days in advance of its intended release date for best results.
Address special characters
Even if metadata is correctly populated, Alexa can be challenged with such tasks as handling, understanding, and reading special characters. Good examples of this would be artist names: “6LACK”, "!!!”, or “P!nk”. If it’s unavoidable, please have your label work with Amazon Music to address these types of scenarios in advance.
Minimize product changes near street date
Frequent redeliveries and changes to your content such as release date, new audio assets, and metadata can impact performance. While re-deliveries are often unavoidable, we urge our partners to keep last-minute changes to a minimum. This will ensure the best possible result for your fans listening on Alexa.