{"id":98495,"date":"2017-01-10T11:01:09","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T11:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=98495"},"modified":"2017-01-10T11:01:09","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T11:01:09","slug":"has-the-amazon-echo-just-killed-digital-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/has-the-amazon-echo-just-killed-digital-radio\/","title":{"rendered":"Has the Amazon Echo just killed digital radio?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon already pretty much owns the online retail sector, it\u2019s Kindle devices have impacted on the traditional book publishing industry and Amazon Prime is creating a real storm in the world of TV and the music industry. So what has the online giant got in its sights next?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well how about radio?\u00a0As one of this year\u2019s hottest tech purchases, the Echo, Amazon\u2019s voice-activated \u201chome assistant\u201d, has already found its ways into hundreds-of-thousands of UK homes. Sitting pretty in the corner of a room and constantly listening for its next instruction.<\/p>\n

The Echo can order you a pizza, book an Uber cab and even turn your lights on and off with a simple voice instruction. But we\u2019re guessing the majority of owners are using it as a device for streaming audio.<\/p>\n

The ability to play radio stations, stream podcasts, read audiobooks or find millions of pieces of music via services like Amazon Prime and Spotify pretty much makes your boring old radio look like an antique.<\/p>\n

While this potentially opens a new route to market for previously geographically limited local radio stations, it does present the question: Will it render the radio itself obsolete?<\/p>\n

And if it does, should we be worried that a company like Amazon could potentially \u201cown\u201d the airwaves?<\/p>\n

There is nothing new about Internet radio. However, the Amazon Echo just makes it so much more accessible. And once we start turning off FM signals (as they already have started doing in Norway) how long will it be before DAB comes under threat?<\/p>\n

OK, perhaps we\u2019re painting a bit of a bleak picture here but should a single company have so much control over vast swaths of our media landscape?<\/p>\n

Ellen Ullman, a San Francisco-based writer and computer programmer is certainly more than a little worried about the omnipresence of connected devices in our homes, telling The Guardian<\/u><\/a>: \u201cIt\u2019s going to give you services, and whatever services you get will become data. It\u2019s sucked up. It\u2019s a huge new profession, data science. Machine learning. It seems benign. But if you add it all up to what they know about you … they know what you eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ullman continued: \u201cWith every advance you have to look over your shoulder and know what you\u2019re giving up \u2013 look over your shoulder and look at what falls away.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazon already pretty much owns the online retail sector, it\u2019s Kindle devices have impacted on the traditional book publishing industry and Amazon Prime is creating a real storm in the world of TV and the music industry. So what has the online giant got in its sights next?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":98498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3729],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98495"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98495"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98508,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98495\/revisions\/98508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}