Amazon Music's global head of programming and content, Alex Luke, has tipped voice control in cars to become the next big thing in music tech.
The former Apple and EMI A&R exec (pictured) appeared at last month's inaugural Music Week Tech Summit Together With O2, where he discussed the huge impact voice has had on streaming.
Speaking in the latest issue of Music Week, Luke said: “The connected car is going to be a big deal. You’re going to see voice migrate out of the home and into the car, and that’s going to really move the needle. You’re going to see voice assistants like Alexa really change the way customers are interacting with music and entertainment in the car, it’s going to have a dramatic effect on the business.
"From an outsider’s perspective, I think the automative industry has been slow to move to new technology - we’ve seen that in the past. But it’s happening, customers are pulling that behaviour into the car. We don’t have anything to announce but it’s an obvious place to take Alexa - we want Alexa to be everywhere customers are.”
Elsewhere, Aaron Bogucki, VP, digital marketing of AWAL, Kobalt's recordings company, predicted augmented reality to cause the next wave of digital disruption in the biz.
“Pokémon Go was the beginning, and Niantic launching Harry Potter in the next year or so, that is going to get everyone and their grandmother using mobile AR a lot more, just in a game sense," said Bogucki. "But games have always led the way into driving consumers’ adoption of technology and that is going to be really interesting.
"Given that we have our phones on us at all times, [when it comes to] location-based experiences, mood-based experiences, AR will open that up. I’d like my music experiences to be customised to what I’m doing at that time, what mood I’m in, what time of day it is, what location I’m at. I think that’s going to be really interesting to see what happens there."
Subscribers can read the full feature on the future of music here.
