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When we think of Alexa services, our first thought probably goes to the classic Echo Dot, but no longer do these devices have to be confined to our homes. Amazon has released the latest edition of the Echo Auto for $54.99, which brings Alexa on the road, allowing you to go completely hands-free in the car.
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Whether you’re looking for directions or want to stream the Foo Fighters‘ newest single “Under You” before their album comes out, the second-generation Echo Auto has got you covered. It brings all the capabilities of the Alexa you know and love in your home and makes them mobile. Now you won’t have to be at home to indulge in her vast knowledge — especially when it comes to giving you directions to that concert venue.
What makes this one different from its previous variation? Well, this time around, Amazon made the second generation a slimmer design for an easier mounting process to your dashboard. There’s also a five-mic built in that’ll allow Alexa to pick up your voice over the sound of the AC, radio and other road noises. And, for the days you forget to pack your portable charger, the Echo Auto comes with a fast car charger to juice up your phone on the go.
You’ll still be able to enjoy the classic capabilities, too, such as streaming your favorite playlists whether it’s through Apple Music, Amazon Music or Spotify. You can also use it to call for roadside assistance: Just say “Alexa, call roadside assistance” and you’ll be connected to an Amazon agent who can request help on your behalf. You can also control your other compatible smart home devices and call and message — all while you’re driving.
Make sure to snag one of these handy devices before your next road trip to enjoy an easier driving experience.
Shop the Amazon Echo Auto below. And for more product recommendations, check out our breakdown of the Ring Dash Cam, a car purse holder that will make your life easier and a roundup of record players and turntables.
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Echo Auto (2nd Gen, 2022 release)
$54.99
The three major label groups have been in talks with the big music streaming services to find a way to get them to remove recordings with AI-generated vocals created to sound like popular artists, Billboard has learned. The idea under discussion with Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music would operate much like the one laid out by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act but would cite violations of rights of publicity, rather than copyright, according to sources at all three majors. Unlike the DMCA, however, this arrangement appears to be voluntary.
The 1998 DMCA gives online services that use, store or transmit copyrighted works a “safe harbor” from secondary liability for copyright infringement as long as they abide by a notice-and-takedown system that allows rightsholders to ask them to remove copyrighted content. That law would not apply to most AI-generated soundalike tracks because they do not infringe protected elements of copyrighted recordings or compositions but rather a trademark or a right of publicity, the protection celebrities may be able to receive to protect their names and likenesses from unauthorized commercial exploitation.
Songs that imitate the voices of big-name talent have become a trend over the past month, reaching widespread attention in mid-April when the track “Heart on My Sleeve,” which apparently used AI to mimic the style and tone of vocals by Drake and The Weeknd, was uploaded to streaming services and then swiftly removed. (The song did not credit those artists, although they were referred to in social media posts about it.)
Citing rights of publicity can be more complicated than copyright, because they are matters of state law in the U.S., backed by limited legal precedent. Rights vary by state, protections for deceased artists vary even more widely, and the use of soundalike vocals for creative purposes may in some cases be protected as free speech. Further complicating matters, these rights almost always belong to artists, not labels, which would presumably file notices on their behalf with authorization. Right now, however, this is the most obvious legal argument with which to keep AI-generated soundalikes off major streaming platforms.
In an April 26 earnings call, UMG CEO and chairman Lucian Grainge seemed to signal this approach to investors. “The recent explosive development in generative AI will… create rights issues with respect to existing copyright law, in the US and other countries, as well as laws governing trademark, name and likeness, voice impersonation, and right of publicity,” he said. “Further, we have provisions in our commercial contracts that provide additional protections.” It is not clear if takedowns issued by the majors would rely on these provisions, state law, goodwill, or some combination.
Some executives have raised concerns that AI soundalikes that imitate the voices of popular artists could result in consumer confusion. Still, a few artists like Grimes and Holly Herndon have embraced the technology, training their own AI voice models and making them available to the public.
Meanwhile, companies like Uberduck, Supertone, Lingyin Engine, and Covers.ai are marketing models with which to replicate voices. Covers.ai, which launched last week, has said that it received over 100,000 sign-ups in anticipation. Tencent Music Entertainment executives announced in November that with the company’s Lingyin Engine they had created and released over 1,000 songs containing synthetic AI voices already, one of which amassed 100 million streams.
This stance taken by the leading streaming services counters a recent announcement from the blockchain-based music platform Audius, which announced that artists can now “opt-in” to allow AI-generated works on their artist page. To organize this new music and avoid confusion, Audius would create a separate tab on the artists’ page especially for user-generated content.
Representatives for Universal, Sony, Warner, Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music did not respond to requests for comment.
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Thousands of television and movie writers in Hollywood are now on strike against major studios including Apple and Amazon, demanding improved wages and better regulations against the use of artificial intelligence in scriptwriting.
According to reports, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) voted unanimously early Tuesday morning (May 2) to strike. This decision came down after ongoing negotiations with the major Hollywood studios collapsed without reaching a new deal in advance of the old deal expiring at midnight on Monday (May 1). Picketing is expected to begin later on Tuesday.
The strike against the 350 streaming services and studios – which include Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal, Paramount and Sony – is the first since 2007. “The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” the WGA said in a statement Monday night.
The WGA demands include residuals from streamers and an increase in minimum wages and contributions to the union’s health and pension plans. The union also wants stronger safeguards in place to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in scriptwriting, preventing the generation of content and rewriting of work already done by human writers.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers representing the studios, claimed that they were offering “generous increases in compensation” including streaming residuals in their negotiations. But they also stated that they weren’t going to compromise on requests by the WGA for “mandatory staffing” and “duration of employment” claiming it would lead to writers being staffed on shows when they’re not needed.
Late-night television shows are expected to be immediately impacted, as Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon are set to stop production. Scripted dramas and soap operas will also feel an impact, leading to their cutting production short or stopping shooting entirely. Movies may be affected as well, but there has been a stockpiling of scripts by studios and networks that was initiated a while ago in case of an extended strike. The previous strike lasted 100 days into 2008, with an estimated local economic loss of $2.1 billion.
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Nicki Minaj is teaming up with 50 Cent as the star and executive producer of a new animated series that he’s producing for Amazon.
According to reports, the “Anaconda” rapper will be the main star in Lady Danger, a new animated series that will make its debut on Amazon’s Freevee network. The series is based on the Dark Horse comic book series by Alex de Campi. The series will be executive produced by 50 Cent through his G-Unit Film & TV company, as well as Minaj. He announced the news through his Instagram account on Wednesday (April 12th), writing: “What you doing today, we working @nickiminaj South Side you already know what it is…I don’t miss.” The news was also shared by Nicki Minaj through her social media accounts as well.
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The series, set in the year 2075, follows a government field agent who stumbles upon a dangerous secret and winds up being left for dead by her team. She’s then resurrected as “an afro futuristic ass-kicking Agent of B.O.O.T.I (Bureau of Organized Terrorism Intervention)” known as Lady Danger. She goes on to fight multiple villains endangering the Earth and its population while keeping her true identity a secret.
Starburns Industries is in charge of the animation, and the series will be written by Carlton Jordan and Crystle Roberson who are also executive producers. The others in that role in the series are Brian Sher, and Paul Young & Mike Griffin of Make Good Content. There are no other details released about the project as of yet.
This series is another in the realm of animation for Nicki Minaj, who previously voiced the character Suglite on Cartoon Network’s acclaimed series Steven Universe. She also had a role in The Angry Birds Movie 2 and Ice Age: Continental Drift in addition to a guest spot on The Cleveland Show. As for 50 Cent, the news makes it another media project under his belt. In addition to his Power series which he developed at Starz under a previous deal as well as the BMF series, he’s also reportedly working on a new original series with Paramount Plus and Lionsgate Television entitled Vice City.
Lizzo and Amazon Studios have reached an extension on the singer’s first-look deal after the scorching success of her Emmy Award-winning show Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. Produced by Lizzo’s production company, Lizzo Bangers, and Amazon Studios, Watch Out for the Big Grrls notched three Emmys in categories including directing and picture editing and became the first streaming series to win the outstanding competition program category.
“Lizzo is one of the most exciting, creative, joyful artists in the industry, and the impact of her Emmy award-winning series Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls exceeded our every expectation,” said Vernon Sanders, head of television, Amazon and MGM Studios. “We are excited to continue our relationship with Lizzo and can’t wait for our global Prime Video audience to experience what’s next.”
“I’m thrilled to continue this partnership with the Amazon team after an incredible experience on season one of Watch Out for the Big Grrrls,” said Lizzo. “I’ve witnessed lives change through this show, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue making space for even more Big Grrrls around the world to shine and break down barriers across this industry.”
After a successful first season, Lizzo is now searching for women who can sing and dance onstage. Those interested in applying can sign up here for casting. Along with nabbing Emmys, Watch Out for the Big Grrrls also received a fistful of wins at the Critics Choice Real TV Awards, Costume Designers Guild Awards, Hollywood Critics Association Television Awards, NAACP Image Awards and Producers Guild Awards.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
Amazon has unveiled a new class of its popular Fire TVs, including the retail giant’s most affordable Fire TV yet, plus three new sizes of the Fire TV Omni QLED series.
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The cheapest among the collection of new releases is the Fire TV 2-Series, which is available in 32-inch and 40-inch, and starts at just $199.99.
“We knew we could build a better experience for the living room,” Daniel Rausch, vice president of Amazon Entertainment Devices and Services said in a news release on March 22. “Televisions are the fastest growing segment in the Fire TV business. When customers love something, we double down.”
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Introducing Amazon Fire TV 32″ 2-Series 720p HD smart TV, stream live TV without cable
$199.99
The 32-inch Fire TV 2-Series is equipped with 720p resolution while the 40-inch features 1080p resolution. Both TVs include support for HDR 10, HLG, Dolby Digital Audio and an Alexa Voice Remote but if you’re looking a higher resolution, Amazon’s Fire TV Omni QLED Series TVs are now available in 43-inch, 50-inch and 55-inch screens and range in price from $449 to $599.
Amazon’s Omni QLED TVs feature Fire TV Ambient Experience and 4K Quantum Dot Technology to deliver an immersive cinematic experience with built-in, far-field microphones, so that you can easily access Alexa from anywhere in the room.
Use voice control to open and operate apps hands free, discover new shows, manage playback and control the Ambient Experience to display calendars, reminders, Sticky Notes and more.
Watch and stream more than 1 million movies, documentaries and TV episodes from Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount+, Disney+, Prime Video and other streamers including Prime Video exclusives such as Daisy Jones & The Six, Swarm, Reggie, The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, Class of ’07, The Summer I Turned Pretty, The Boys, Fleabag, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Reacher and tons of other content, stream music, watch videos on YouTube and more.
Amazon’s new Fire TV Omni QLED TVs will be released on May 11. Click the buy button below to pre-order.
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All-new Amazon Fire TV 43″ Omni QLED Series 4K UHD smart TV, Dolby Vision IQ, hands-free with Alexa (Pre-order)
$449.99
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Ben Affleck and Amazon Studios highly-anciticpated film, Air is a few weeks from hitting theaters across the board and to hype up the film’s release, Amazon will be embarking on a multi-city consumer experience to both promote the film and help people have a good time.
Variety is reporting that the studio will be teaming up with sneaker culture icon, Jason Markk to host said multi-city consumer tour promptly named “Fresh Air” which aims to bring sneakerheads together and celebrate the culture that’s been basically ruined by resellers, backdooring employees, and sneakerbots (yes, we salty over here). With the help of guerrilla teams, the “Fresh Air” teams are set to turn big time cities like New York, LA and Chicago into sneakerhead havens where we get to express our love of the sneaker culture while getting some sneaker products at the same time.
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Free to the public, the “Fresh Air” activation allows attendees to celebrate self-expression through fashion as they share their sneaker stories while getting a complimentary shoe cleaning, with premium care products from Jason Markk and staff on site to offer advice on keeping their shoes in pristine condition. In addition to their freshly cleaned kicks, attendees will also walk away with an “Air” and Jason Markk sneaker duster bag.
If Amazon really loved us sneakerheads they’d give us chances to get out hands on some Air Jordan 1 “Lost and Found,”‘s. Lord knows Jeff Bezos can afford to lace the entire sneaker community with a pair from city to city. Just sayin.’
Still this is a pretty cool initiative as we’re sure sneakerheads will be putting their best laced foot forward when the “Fresh Air” team hits their hood in the coming weeks. Heck, they’ll even be posting up at Jason Markk’s flagship store in L.A. Should be interesting to see how this sneaker community promo tour plays out.
Are you looking forward to the “Fresh Air” team hitting your city? Will you be catching Air when it premiers on April 5th? Let us know in the comment section below.
Amazon plans to eliminate 9,000 more jobs in the next few weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff on Monday.
The job cuts would mark the second largest round of layoffs in the company’s history, adding to the 18,000 employees the tech giant said it would lay off in January. The company’s workforce doubled during the pandemic, however, in the midst of a hiring surge across almost the entire tech sector.
Tech companies have announced tens of thousands of job cuts this year.
In the memo, Jassy said the second phase of the company’s annual planning process completed this month led to the additional job cuts. He said Amazon will still hire in some strategic areas.
“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible,” Jassy said.
The job cuts announced Monday will hit profitable areas for the company including its cloud computing unit AWS and its burgeoning advertising business. Twitch, the gaming platform Amazon owns, will also see some layoffs as well as Amazon’s PXT organizations, which handle human resources and other functions.
Prior layoffs had also hit PXT, the company’s stores division, which encompasses its e-commerce business as well as company’s brick-and-mortar stores such as Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, and other departments such as the one that runs the virtual assistant Alexa.
Earlier this month, the company said it would pause construction on its headquarters building in northern Virginia, though the first phase of that project will open this June with 8,000 employees.
Like other tech companies, including Facebook parent Meta and Google parent Alphabet, Amazon ramped up hiring during the pandemic to meet the demand from homebound Americans that were increasingly buying stuff online to keep themselves safe from the virus.
Amazon’s workforce, in warehouses and offices, doubled to more than 1.6 million people in about two years. But demand slowed as the worst of the pandemic eased. The company began pausing or cancelling its warehouse expansion plans last year.
Amid growing anxiety over the potential for a recession, Amazon in the past few months shut down a subsidiary that’s been selling fabrics for nearly 30 years and shuttered its hybrid virtual, in-home care service Amazon Care among other cost-cutting moves.
Jassy said Monday given the uncertain economy and the “uncertainty that exists in the near future,” the company has chosen to be more streamlined.
He said the teams that will be impacted by the latest round of layoffs are not done making final decisions on which roles will be eliminated. The company plans to finalize those decisions by mid to late April and notify those who will be laid off.
Amazon is pausing construction of its second headquarters in Virginia following the biggest round of layoffs in the company’s history and its shifting plans around remote work.
The Seattle-based company is delaying the beginning of construction of PenPlace, the second phase of its headquarters development in northern Virginia, Amazon’s real estate chief John Schoettler said in a statement. He said the company has already hired more than 8,000 employees and will welcome them to the Met Park campus, the first phase of development, when it opens this June.
“We’re always evaluating space plans to make sure they fit our business needs and to create a great experience for employees, and since Met Park will have space to accommodate more than 14,000 employees, we’ve decided to shift the groundbreaking of PenPlace (the second phase of HQ2) out a bit,” Schoettler said.
Schoettler also emphasized the company remains “committed to Arlington” and the local region, which Amazon picked – along with New York City – to be the site of its new headquarters, known as HQ2, several years ago. More than 230 municipalities had initially competed to house the projects. New York won the competition by promising nearly $3 billion in tax breaks and grants, among other benefits, but opposition from local politicians, labor leaders and progressive activists led Amazon to scrap its plans there.
In February 2021, Amazon said it would build an eye-catching, 350-foot Helix tower to anchor the second phase of its redevelopment plans in Arlington. The new office towers were expected to welcome more than 25,000 workers when complete. Amazon spokesperson Zach Goldsztejn said those plans haven’t changed and the construction pause is not a result – or indicative of – the company’s latest job cuts, which affected 18,000 corporate employees.
The layoffs were part of a broader cost-cutting move to trim down Amazon’s growing workforce amid more sluggish sales and fears of a potential recession. Meta, Salesforce and other tech companies — many of which had gone on hiring binges in the past few years — have also been doing the same.
Amid the job cuts, Amazon has urged its employees to come back to the office. Last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company would require corporate employees to return to the office at least three days a week, a shift from the prior policy that allowed leaders to make the call on how their teams worked. The change, which will be effective on May 1, has ignited some pushback from employees who say they prefer to work remotely.
Goldsztejn said the company is expecting to move forward with what he called pre-construction work on the construction in Virginia later this year, including applying for permits. He said final timing for the second phase of the project is still being determined.
When Virginia won the competition to land HQ2, it did so less with direct incentives, and more with promises to invest in the regional workforce, particularly a graduate campus of Virginia Tech that is currently under construction just a couple of miles from Amazon’s under-construction campus in Crystal City.
Still, there were significant direct incentives. The state promised $22,000 for each new Amazon job on the condition that the average worker salary for those new jobs is $150,000, annually. But those incentives — about $550 million for 25,000 projected jobs — are not supposed to be paid out until 2024 at the earliest. Goldsztejn, the Amazon spokesperson, said the company “has not received any incentives to date related to the construction of HQ2 and the 8,000 jobs that we’ve created in Arlington since 2018.”
Arlington County also promised Amazon a cut of its hotel-tax revenue on the theory that hotel occupancies would increase significantly once Amazon builds out its campus. That incentive, projected initially at about $23 million, is dependent on how many square feet of office space Amazon occupies in the county.
The county said in a statement it “values the ongoing partnership” it has with Amazon throughout the creation of the second headquarters, which it noted has always been a multiyear project.
“We’re confident Amazon remains committed to the second phase of the project – PenPlace – and its benefits to the community,” it said.
Amazon had previously said it planned to complete the project by 2025.
After a four-year hiatus, long-running Seattle music festival Bumbershoot will return this Labor Day weekend — with help from e-commerce giant Amazon.
As announced Tuesday (Feb. 21) by new Bumbershoot producer New Rising Sun, the festival will return for its 50th edition on Sept. 2-3, 2023, and Amazon has agreed to underwrite presale tickets for this year’s edition to keep it affordable. The e-retailer will sponsor a special early bird $50 single-day ticket and $85 two-day general admission ticket — prices that are 50% lower than when the event was last held in 2019. Amazon has also announced plans to work with arts organization Third Stone to give out 5,000 tickets to area non-profits and community organizations.
First launched in 1971, Bumbershoot faced a double whammy in recent years thanks to declining ticket sales and attendance in the 2010s followed by three years of closure due to the pandemic.
Bumbershoot was previously produced by AEG Presents, which had agreed to produce the festival with Seattle non-profit festival production company One Reel beginning in 2014 to help cover the $1 million in debt One Reel had racked up and restore the event’s financial footing. In 2019, AEG Pacific Northwest vp Rob Thomas announced the company was not renewing its agreement, hinting at financial differences with One Reel. That same year, a barricade collapse at Bumbershoot injured four attendees.
One Reel executives announced plans to stage the festival in 2020, only to be stymied by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, host venue the Seattle Center put out a new request for proposals for the event, with the winning bid going to New Rising Sun, a collective founded by Neumos co-owner Steven Severin, who now serves as Bumbershoot’s co-president & director of music programming; Vital 5 Productions founder Greg Lundgren, who serves as curator; and McCaw Hall general manager Joe Paganelli, who serves as producer.
“We heard from our community and took action — fulfilling our promise of affordability and inclusivity,” Severin said in a statement to Billboard. “When re-imagining our festival for this return, we examined everything through an arts lens and expanded upon what art is and can be. We look forward to sharing our vision this Labor Day weekend.”
“As ticket prices steadily climb for concerts and events around the globe, we’re excited to support reduced and free ticket prices, creating opportunity for more of our community to enjoy the diversity of Seattle’s creative ecosystem, participate in Bumbershoot’s exciting education programs, and immerse themselves in the arts,” added Amazon senior vp/general counsel/secretary David Zapolsky.
Tickets go on sale Friday (Feb. 24) at 10:00 a.m. PT via bumbershoot.com. Fans are encouraged to purchase tickets in advance as they are expected to sell quickly. A performer lineup will be announced at a later date.