Amazon Alexa is First to Reveal Katy Perry’s New Album Date
Pop star Katy Perry relied on Amazon Alexa to let people know when her next album is set to come out. The voice assistant started telling fans on Tuesday when her KP5 album will arrive in a notably low-key reveal for such a successful artist.
Alexa and Katy
The announcement was first spotted by a Katy Perry fan account on Twitter. Alexa takes the role of the cool friend who’s friends with the band in its conversational response to the question of when KP5, Perry’s aptly named fifth album, will be on sale.
”Katy asked me to let you know that her new album will be released on August 14. Make sure to follow Katy Perry on Amazon Music for more,’ Alexa answers.
The response appears in all lower-case letters against a black screen on Alexa-powered smart displays. Oddly, the response is not always consistent. Sometimes, the voice assistant shows a picture of the singer, refers to the album as “tentatively titled KP5” and says that details of the album have not been announced. The more formal answer combined with the photo is an odd contrast to the conversational answer written like a text message without autocorrect. Amazon confirmed to Voicebot that the partnership was officially planned with Katy Perry, but the dueling responses from Alexa suggest the voice assistant is drawing from two different sources for the answer for some reason. The first single from the album, title ‘Daisies,’ debuts on Friday when Perry will perform live on Amazon at 1 p.m.
Battle of the Bands
Perry is one of many artists planning to announce new music through Alexa, including Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and The Weeknd. The announcements are part of Amazon’s broader effort to boost Amazon Music through its voice assistant. Alexa recently added the ability to respond to requests for different versions of a song, understanding the difference between requests for live shows, a capella, or other variations on a tune and can now respond to request for music in more than 60 languages.
Playing music is always at or near the top of most popular uses for Alexa and other voice assistants. The exclusive element of news like this is a natural selling point for Amazon Music. Alexa is ecumenical in where it streams music from, however. SiriusXM added an archive of more than 10,000 hours of its shows to Alexa last fall, while Spotify extended its free service to Alexa devices. And Apple agreed to let Apple Music and Apple podcasts be playable through Alexa in the U.S., and later made Apple Music playable on Alexa devices in several European countries as well. The Katy Perry news may not convince many people to start using Amazon Music or Alexa out of nowhere, but it works as another facet of Amazon’s bigger strategy for adding users.
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