NOT impressed with Alexa!!

[anon(463177)]

I've had Alexa for several years and its been a constant problem getting it to play Pandora. Either it cant find the music or cant play the music or the volume isnt constant or something! If I play off my phone through BT speakers there is NEVER a problem! Since all i want to do is play music I DO NOT recommend this tool! And dont tell me its my wifi or the wrong Skill is loaded or something. This is simply a poorly performing product that does not live up to the hype. Out here!

 

[SpookDroid]

Wouldn't put it past Pandora... whenever I used it (seldom, TBH) in anything other than a phone or tablet, it was a true PITA. There's a reason Toyota decided to just scrap it from their (decidedly already crappy) Infotaintment systems last year.

That being said, and while I'm primarily a Boogle Home user, whenever I've used an Echo WITH SPOTIFY, it's just as good as anything else. So I'm guessing this is specifically a bad experience with Pandora...

 

[isired]

Echo + Spotify (and Sirius, and Amazon Music) user here, works flawlessly in my experience for 2-3 years.

 

[me just saying]

I've had Alexa for several years and its been a constant problem getting it to play Pandora. Either it cant find the music or cant play the music or the volume isnt constant or something! If I play off my phone through BT speakers there is NEVER a problem! Since all i want to do is play music I DO NOT recommend this tool! And dont tell me its my wifi or the wrong Skill is loaded or something. This is simply a poorly performing product that does not live up to the hype. Out here!

did you ever asked for help. maybe it is something you are saying or something else that could be causing. I did scan through your postings here and did not see any questions about it. who knows, some one here might be able to help.

 

[Rukbat]

Remember also - Alexa (and Google Assistant and Siri and Cortana) is not artificial intelligence. They're all just (only half-decent) speech to text parsers that do database lookups for 99% of what you ask for.

For 1980 text to speech, they're amazingly impossible software, but as AI, they're not even at the sub-beginning level. Half the time (at least) the app doesn't "decode" what you say properly, if (like Google Assistant) it's using Google's database to look up what you want, 25% of the time that misinterprets what you ask.

But things like Echo are good for turning lights on and off, locking and unlocking doors, etc. (Changing the level or color of a smart light is an iffy thing. "on" and "off" they understand. And they usually get the temperature and time right for a smart thermostat, but I've seen misinterpretations of 10 or 20 degrees, or a few hours.)

 

[isired]

I have a similar problem. I ask it to play my "electronica radio" station, and she plays "chillout radio" instead. The app shows that she heard me correctly, she just doesn't want to play electronica radio.

Are both stations from the same source?

 

[me just saying]

I have a similar problem. I ask it to play my "electronica radio" station, and she plays "chillout radio" instead. The app shows that she heard me correctly, she just doesn't want to play electronica radio.

if those are the actual terms you are using in the command, you need to be specific, like give the actual station id or something that is more specific. for example electronica radio has over 25 stations.

 

[SpookDroid]

Also, if the app (Alexa) shows that it heard you correctly, again, this is a PANDORA problem. Let's put the blame where it belongs (since the title suggests that Amazon's Assistant is at fault here...when it's not).