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[jmone]

It was a long decade!

[sarkonovich]

Okay. Looks like she's thinking it's a playlist even though you're saying album. I need to adjust the interaction model....will do!

Steve

[sarkonovich]

House Band -- a JRiver Amazon Alexa app -- has been updated as of this morning. In addition to numerous little bug fixes, improvements include:

Revised Recognition Model.
  Overall, recognition should be better. (I hope.)

Revised searches
   Overall, searches should be a bit quicker, and more accurate.

More robust support for playlists.
  Built-in Smartlists can be called up without going through the whole name, e.g.,
  "Play the Last 100 Tracks playlist" will play 'Audio -- Recently Imported -- Last 100 Tracks'
   Overall better handling of numbers, e.g., 2005 Top 100 Billboard USA, 80's hits, etc.


Better Feedback:

1. Spoken Feedback:
     If a search fails, Alexa will tell you what she searched for.  She'll also send a card to the Alexa app with the search string(s) used. This should help diagnose if there was a voice recognition failure, or a search failure.
 
2. In general, the feedback -- both spoken and written -- should be more informative.

3. Saying "Help" will send a 'quick reference' card to the Alexa App.

TO DO:

Classical Support. (Currently, there's no support for the "Composer" tags.)
Video Support. (Currently, videos will come up in general searches...but there's no way to do video only searches, etc.)
 

As always, looking for feedback, especially of the following form:

1. Bugs!  "There was a problem with the requested skills response."
2. Failed searches. The search string delivered to the card doesn't turn up what it should (e.g., if you paste it into the Media Center search window.)
3. Poor Recognition. Alexa refuses to "hear" what you are saying.

Thanks!

[jmschnur]

Thanks for these!
I am now back at my home (before at my daughters in Houston). I will try this when I my Echo which is back ordered right now arrives.

Joel

[jmone]

Did some testing, Alexa is understanding my requests perfectly but not finding the Album. 

This is the card:

Here are the search strings I used for your request:
[Album]=two thousand one top one hundred uk
[Album]=2001 top 100 uk

In MC the Album is "2001 Top 100 UK" 


Another Example:

Here are the search strings I used for your request:
[Album]=two thousand fifteen top one hundred
[Album]=2000 15 top 100

In MC the Album is "2015 Top 100"

Could it be capitalisation?

[sarkonovich]

Thanks for the feedback.

What happens if you paste '[Album]=2001 top 100 uk' into media center? Do you get the results you expect?
Media center searches are not case dependent, so that's not the problem.

(Pasting the second search string won't work because of a formatting error -- '2000 15' -- that's fixed now.)


I went through and renamed a compilation album of mine these exact titles, and titles like them, and it always worked. So, I'm going to have to think about this.  (Maybe there's something about the way you've tagged the albums,  though this sounds unlikely...)

For these searches....of compilation albums...you should either get a listing of matches or a message saying to limit the search or say, "Play All." It depends on the number of different artists on the album. Since there's no way for me know know if multiple results are because there's a single compilation album, or if you have albums by different artists with the same title, each track (by a different artist) on a compilation album is treated as a separate album. This is the same as media center behavior, I believe.

[Venner]

Uploading tens of thousands of mp3 files to Amazon -- much of my library is transferred from old 78s and will definitely not match their tracks! -- and wasting hundreds of gigabytes of bandwidth and months of continual upload time just was not an option. Thus, I have been looking for a local DLNA-to-Echo integration solution for quite some time now and was happy (and surprised, at this point) to run across a mention of the 'House Band' Alexa skill.

 I downloaded a demo version of your program, added my music library (all properly tagged by hand), and added the skill to my Echo. I'm happy to say, the solution seems to work rather painlessly, with some caveats.

1.) Echo Playback: Is it not possible to stream local audio to Alexa? Any way? I saw this addressed earlier in the thread... If I connect the Echo to the PC as a (dumb) Bluetooth speaker, I can still control the media center via voice, so it works out, but that's a strange work-around. I realize that JRiver MediaCenter is probably installed mostly as a centerpiece of a home entertainment PC connected to external audio, but I don't think my use-case -- casually listening to my own music on the Echo in the kitchen using voice control -- will be an edge-case either.

2.) Track Information: I get the wrong information back when I ask for info about the track.
"Alexa, ask House Band who this is" tells me,
"You are listening to PLAYING by [album name] from the album [track name]" instead of
"You are listening to [track name] by [artist] from the album [album name]."

Some questions work, some don't (which I expect since you're currently developing and debugging this.)
If I ask "Alexa, ask House Band the name of the song" I get the above 'playing' result, but if I ask "Alexa, ask House Band who this artist is" it just times out with the complaint that it can't reach the House Band skill (every time). Similarly, if the album field is blank, it complains it can't reach the media server too.


I'll have to fiddle with it a while before I decide whether it is worth the purchase price for your software; it looks very nice, but for my desired application I wouldn't be using 90% of the functionality. However, regarding the Echo integration, it's quite nice overall to see progress in this area and it seems to generally work well. I'll definitely revisit in the future.

[sarkonovich]

Hello there!

Thanks for the feedback!  Just to be clear, House Band isn't an official JRiver product, so all fault goes to me, not them.

Echo Playback. Right now, the only way to get playback through the Echo is the way you've got it set up. It's true, the central use case for House Band is to get your music to play through your home stereo. But, more importantly, there is currently no way for 3rd party developers to play through the Echo (except via bluetooth.) Amazon simply doesn't allow it.


Track information. I several thoughts here. First, try the command, "What's playing?" or "What song is this?" This should get you the most consistent results.
(I'm guessing that "who this artist is" actually doing a search of your library, maybe trying to find all tracks that have 'is' in the information. If you have a very large library, this could cause it to timeout.)

Second, launch House Band first, and then ask "What's playing?" I've found that unless my speech is pretty deliberate, "ask house band what's playing" will frequently just trigger some built-in Echo functionality.

Finally, it would be very helpful to me if you could tell me if a) you always get that weird response ("you're listening to Playing by [album name]...") and what command you're using to start the song playing. For example, if you say,

"Play the song taking a chance on love by Benny Goodman" do you get the strange result?

Finally, I'd suggest saying "Help" after you've launched the skill and take a look at the 'quick reference' card that's sent to the Alexa app. It has lots of tips on how to search by song, artist, album, etc.

In any event, I'm glad it's working (mostly!) well for you!

[jmone]

Thanks for the feedback.

What happens if you paste '[Album]=2001 top 100 uk' into media center? Do you get the results you expect?

Yup - "[Album]=2001 top 100 uk" in MC works correctly and FYI they individual tracks are tagged with Individual Artist but the Album Artist and Album Artist (Auto) is "(Multiple Artist)"

...but I'm having trouble testing again with Authentication On.  Alexa is issuing commands but MC is not responding unless I turn Authentication Off.  Do I need to set up the Skill again?

[Venner]

Hello there!

Thanks for the feedback!  Just to be clear, House Band isn't an official JRiver product, so all fault goes to me, not them.

Echo Playback. Right now, the only way to get playback through the Echo is the way you've got it set up. It's true, the central use case for House Band is to get your music to play through your home stereo. But, more importantly, there is currently no way for 3rd party developers to play through the Echo (except via bluetooth.) Amazon simply doesn't allow it.


Track information. I several thoughts here. First, try the command, "What's playing?" or "What song is this?" This should get you the most consistent results.
(I'm guessing that "who this artist is" actually doing a search of your library, maybe trying to find all tracks that have 'is' in the information. If you have a very large library, this could cause it to timeout.)

Second, launch House Band first, and then ask "What's playing?" I've found that unless my speech is pretty deliberate, "ask house band what's playing" will frequently just trigger some built-in Echo functionality.

Finally, it would be very helpful to me if you could tell me if a) you always get that weird response ("you're listening to Playing by [album name]...") and what command you're using to start the song playing. For example, if you say,

"Play the song taking a chance on love by Benny Goodman" do you get the strange result?

Finally, I'd suggest saying "Help" after you've launched the skill and take a look at the 'quick reference' card that's sent to the Alexa app. It has lots of tips on how to search by song, artist, album, etc.

In any event, I'm glad it's working (mostly!) well for you!

Oh, sure, and thanks your efforts on the plugin then! Here's some I just tried

Me: "Alexa, ask House Band to play the album City of Refuge"

Echo: "Playing songs from Abigail Washburn City of Refuge"

Me: "Alexa, ask House Band what's playing"

Echo: "You're listening to PLAYING by City of Refuge from the album Prelude"

 (The track should be 'Prelude' and the album 'City of Refuge'. In the Playing Now program display, the tags show in the correct places.)

-------------

Alexa: "Ask House Band to play No Rain by Blind Melon"

Echo: "Playing all tracks matching No Rain By Blind Melon" (Only one match)

Alexa: "Ask House Band what song is this"

Echo: "You are listening to PLAYING by Blind Melon from the album No Rain"

(Artist - Blind Melon, Album - Blind Melon, Track - No Rain)


It seems to do it for every song no matter how I ask it. I'm using JRiver MediacCenter 21.0.50 (latest) on Windows 10. All files were tagged with Mp3tag with ID3v1 and ID3v2.4 tags and embedded album images, where applicable.

[sarkonovich]

Yup - "[Album]=2001 top 100 uk" in MC works correctly and FYI they individual tracks are tagged with Individual Artist but the Album Artist and Album Artist (Auto) is "(Multiple Artist)"

...but I'm having trouble testing again with Authentication On.  Alexa is issuing commands but MC is not responding unless I turn Authentication Off.  Do I need to set up the Skill again?

So, the easy one first. You might need to disable and reenable the skill. House Band grabs the Media Server authentication token on linking, but if that changes -- which I think it does?  after a couple of days if you close the program -- you need to re-link. That was the best I could do. Amazon wouldn't let me gather Media Center user names/passwords.

The hard one: ugh. Nothing comes to mind immediately. I'll try recreate how you have things tagged on my end and see if I can reproduce it.

Thanks for all your help.

[sarkonovich]

Oh, sure, and thanks your efforts on the plugin then! Here's some I just tried

Me: "Alexa, ask House Band to play the album City of Refuge"

Echo: "Playing songs from Abigail Washburn City of Refuge"

Me: "Alexa, ask House Band what's playing"

Echo: "You're listening to PLAYING by City of Refuge from the album Prelude"

 (The track should be 'Prelude' and the album 'City of Refuge'. In the Playing Now program display, the tags show in the correct places.)

-------------

Alexa: "Ask House Band to play No Rain by Blind Melon"

Echo: "Playing all tracks matching No Rain By Blind Melon" (Only one match)

Alexa: "Ask House Band what song is this"

Echo: "You are listening to PLAYING by Blind Melon from the album No Rain"

(Artist - Blind Melon, Album - Blind Melon, Track - No Rain)


It seems to do it for every song no matter how I ask it. I'm using JRiver MediacCenter 21.0.50 (latest) on Windows 10. All files were tagged with Mp3tag with ID3v1 and ID3v2.4 tags and embedded album images, where applicable.

Venner,

Thanks for helping me out. I'll look into it. Maybe it's a windows thing....but honestly at this point I have no idea!!!

EDIT:  We got this one figured out. Thanks for your help!

[jmone]

Did some more testing, this Time on a Collection of "Radio Station"s.  If I have just "Album" tagged with "Radio Station" then Alex will not find it but as soon as I add "Radio Station" to Album Artist / Album Artist (Auto) then Alexa will find it.  The search in Alexa was heard as [Album]=radio station

[jmone]

...so given my issues with (Multiple Artists) it seems to be something to do with when Album is different to Album Artist / Album Artist (Auto)

[sarkonovich]

Thanks.  That gives me something to look at!

Steve

[jmschnur]

Back up with a new echo.  I really would like play doctor to be an option. 

[sarkonovich]

It is, in a limited way. You can say, "Create a playlist based on....." or "Make a ..... playlist." For example, "Make a playlist based on Neil Young."

You can't modify the PlayDoctor parameters by voice, though.

But is that what you had in mind?

Steve

[jmone]

Steve there is a MCWS call for PlayDoctor if that helps:

Added MCWS/v1/Playback/PlayDoctor to allow a simple entry to starting Play Doctor playback using a seed.

[sarkonovich]

Yes, that functionality already exists in House Band, using that MCWS call.

"Make/Create a playlist based on [seed]" or "Create/Make a [seed] playlist]" or "Create/Make a playdoctor playlist based on [seed]"

....anything in that arena should work.

Steve

[jonkjon]

I just purchased an Echo and I'll be glad to report back any issues once I get it.
I see that built-in smartlists are supported (I think) but can we play from custom smartlists?
Thanks for all of your work on this.....

--Jon

[sarkonovich]

Yes, they are.

If you look in the Alexa App, under the skill, the description provides a reference of supported commands. For example,

"Play my top 10 Springsteen playlist"  or
"Play the playlist running tunes"

etc.,

should work.

EDIT: Smartlists (and dumblists) both work.

[jmschnur]

I am looking to say play "song" with play doctor or say play album with play doctor.

[sarkonovich]

Well, one thing I've learned in working on this is that I haven't scratched the surface of what JRiver can do.

What is the difference, I wonder, between entering, for example,

"kind of blue"

in the Play Doctor search, and

[Album]=kind of blue

??

I just tried both and couldn't really  distinguish a difference in the lists that were generated. In fact, I think it defaulted to the album. I'd be interested to know if there is a difference.

In any event, you can currently use the name of any album, artist, track to create a PlayDoctor playlist.

And, I don't think it would be any difficulty in implementing search of the sort:

"Create a playlist/playdoctor playlist based on the [album|song|artist]....."

where that would create strings like, [Artist]=Miles Davis

I'll look into it and report back here.

Thanks for the input!
Steve

[jmschnur]

When you name a song and then play it with play doctor JRiver generates a list of 100 tracks with what it thinks are similar or related music,
I have over 1500 albums so play doctor can provide rather interesting playlists. I use it a lot.

[jmschnur]

House band could not identify Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett. IT thought I asked for colon cancer.

[jmschnur]

Kind of blue is an album. "So what" is the lead track  from that a ablum. Several artists play this.

[jmschnur]

I think KOLN is hard to understand for the echo.

[sarkonovich]

jmshnur,

Thanks for the feedback.

Just to be perfectly clear, House Band does allow you to generate PlayDoctor playlists right now. You just say,

"Create a playlist based on [song | album | artist]" (e.g., "Create a playlist based on So What" or Make a playlist based on "Kind of Blue")

and you'll get a list of 100 songs based on that seed. The command is equivalent to just typing "so what" or "kind of blue" into the playdoctor search box.

There is no command currently equivalent to typing in:

[Name]=So what

or

[Album]=Kind of blue

But having tried both "Kind of Blue" and "[Album]=Kind of Blue", I couldn't really discern any difference in the kind of playlist that PlayDoctor generated.

Anyway, just try it. I bet it does what you're looking for?

About Koln.  Alexa is not so good with foreign words -- and as the result "colon cancer" shows, she really doesn't parse things word by word but looks for context, too. (I bet if you said, "Koln Germany" she'd get it right.)

There's two things you can do that really can help. First, make sure you've done the voice training, available in the Alexa App. Second, if you go to your history in your app, you can see what you've said, and give feedback on whether she heard you correctly. Sometimes repeating the phrase a few time, answering "no" every time she misunderstands, will eventually get her to give up and try something different. If she ever does hear "Koln", then answer "yes" -- that usually takes care of it.

I will add the exact phrase "Koln Concerts" in the next update of the recognition model, which should help. (Though it might make it harder to play any album you have called "colon cancer."   )

EDIT: I just tried, many times, to play the Koln Concert on Amazon Prime...and the Echo just couldn't get it, though it's in my library. She just can't understand the word "KOLN". I'm afraid this one is out of my control, I think.

[jmschnur]

This is very helpful. I think I can get what I need from play a list based upon..

To bad about KOLN I started a card on that with the Echo people as well.

[sarkonovich]

Ah good. I was going to suggest that. I was surprised when I couldn't get Simon says to say "Koln Germany" (I got "cold in germany") or just a regular (non House Band) "Alexa, play The Koln concerts" 

I was going to report this as well.

Steve

[DJLegba]

What happens if you pronounce it like "Kiln" or even "Cologne"?

[sarkonovich]

Hey!

"Play the album the Cologne Concert"

is recognized perfectly.

So, in the short term, you just need to rename (well, translate?) the album title.

I had to do this with Sigur Ros albums. Even if I could pronounce "Ágætis byrjun", there's no way Alexa would recognize it. So, for now, it's renamed in translation,
"A Good Beginning."

Thanks for the suggestion!

Steve

[jmschnur]

Yes the phrase u suggested worked. But you need to be quite precise in the wording.

[jmschnur]

It might help if you do so as well . This would insure that they know there is interest .

[jonkjon]

Got my Echo today and installed the House Band skill and so far..........flawless! Thank you so much for all of your efforts on this. Fantastic!

--Jon

[sarkonovich]

That's great! I plan to keep working on it, so if issues crop up, post them here and I'll do what I can.

Steve

[sarkonovich]

Basic Video Search:

House Band now supports basic video queries. For example, you can say:

"Play the video Citizen Kane"
"Play the movie Annie Hall"

etc.

Essentially, this will send the relevant MCWS string with the parameters: [Media Type]=Video [Name]=Citizen Kane

At this point the video support is pretty rudimentary:

1. It does not search to see if you have the video requested, or if you have multiple versions. It just tries to play it.
2. No real support for TV Shows (season, episode, etc).

[jmone]

Thanks for all your work on this Steve.  Works pretty well!

[jonkjon]

Started having problems last night with playing any playlists. Whenever I say "Alexa, Tell Houseband to play playlist [playlist name]" she responds with "I couldn't find any playlists matching [playlist name]". I have tried variations on the phrases but nothing is working.

Also, If I say "Alexa, Tell Houseband to  play all music by [Artist Name]" She responds with "Playing all videos by [Artist Name].

--Jon

[sarkonovich]

Jon,

Thanks for the feedback. Here's what's going on.

"Tell House Band to play playlist [playlist name]"

The response you're getting isn't from House Band, it's from Amazon. The solution is to first launch house band, and then ask for the playlist.

Very unfortunately, it's hard to get House Band to play music with what is called a "one-shot" invocation, e.g., "Tell House Band to play", "Ask House Band to play."  I (and others) have complained many times to Amazon about this. But Alexa hears "play", and decides you want to hear Prime Music, even though you said "House Band." Amazon's recognition model heavily skews toward it's in built functionality. (It also doesn't surprise me if this just started happening. They are constantly tweaking their recognition model.) They've promised they are going to fix this, and said that "big changes" are coming regarding how 3rd party skills are invoked. But nothing definite.

"Play all music by [Artist Name]"

House Band doesn't currently support that command. But a) it should and b) it certainly shouldn't give you that response!
I'll see if I can implement that command without having to resubmit the app to Amazon. If I can, I'll fix this (and the response) today.

For now, the way to do what you want is this. Launch the skill and then say,

"Play [Artist Name]"

Alternatively, you can say,

"Play songs by/albums by [Artist Name]"

If you have more than one album by the artist, Alexa will list them. You can interrupt at any time and say,

"Play All"

I'll report back here when "Play all music by [Artist Name]" is working.

[EDIT: This command is now supported. See response below]

Thanks again for the feedback!

Steve

[sarkonovich]

Jon,

Okay, the command,

"Play all music by [Artist Name]"

now does just that. As does:

"Play all music." -- will play everything in your library.

(Erroneous response "playing all videos..." is now fixed, too)

Let me know if it works for you, and thanks for the help!

Steve

[jonkjon]

OK Great. I just tried the "Play all music by" feature you added and it's working great. I (accidentally) tried "Tell Houseband to turn up the volume" without the "Launch Houseband" command first and that worked. I tried it again several times and that seems to work without missing. So, to be clear, I should always say "Alexa, Launch Houseband" before issuing any commands. Is that correct?
One last thing....Is there a command for shuffling playlists?
Thanks for getting me straight. That's no easy feat! 

--Jon

[sarkonovich]

Jon,

You *should* be able to do everything in one shot: "Tell/Ask House band to...." I've just found it hit and miss, especially with volume commands, or "play" / "pause" commands. About 1/3 of the time, it doesn't trigger the skill and instead turns up the volume on the Echo. It works better if I add deliberate pauses, like, "Tell...house band...to play"

So, I just usually launch the skill and go from there. But, again, it should work both ways. But how *well* it works is completely up to Amazon. I have no control over that.

There's no way to shuffle playlists. But I'll add that to the to-do list. Over the next couple months I hope to add more robust video support and classical music searches. (No good way to search by composer now.)

Steve

[jonkjon]

Got it.....Thanks again!

--Jon

[kensn]

I can't get House band to change Zones. It lists the Zones correctly, but will not change to another one. House Band will respond with "I can't find a Zone Patio" even though House band responds with Patio as one of the available zones when queried. I have tried numerous times, and have renamed a couple of Zones with very easy names to recognize and still no joy.

Any thoughts??

Ken

[sarkonovich]

Hmm....It sounds like you doing everything right. Just to double check, what is the command that you are using to change zones? Try:

"Change the zone to patio"

(Though if you are getting the error message, you're clearly giving Alexa some command she likes....)

Also, does House Band report the correct current zone when asked:

"What is the current zone?"

And one more thought:  Is the server House Band is linked to the playing from it's own library, so that the zones are "Patio" and not something like "There: Patio"?

EDIT:  House Band now sends a card to the Alexa app when it cannot find the requested zone. The card contains the name of the requested zone along with a list of available zones.

If the requested zone appears on that list (and appears in both places identically -- punctuation, spelling, etc) and you still get the message about not being able to find the requested zone, well, I'll have to think about that. I'm guessing/hoping that there will be some discrepancy between the requested and listed zones, though.

Steve

[kensn]

Houseband is linked with my Jukebox PC. It is a client of my Main PC library.

Houseband reports MainPc as my current zone. IT is listed on my Jukebox PC as There:Main Pc Zone

When I request to play a song it plays to my Main PC.

When I ask "What Zones do I have?"

Jukebox:Patio is listed among the others

When I say "Change the Zone to Jukebox Patio"

Response is "I can not find a Zone called Jukebox Patio"
Houseband sends a card with this information spelled correctly and the Zone Jukebox: Patio listed among the others.

[sarkonovich]

So, that's the answer. It's looking for a zone called Jukebox Patio and your is named Jukebox: Patio (with a colon.)

I'll push a fix to this in the next few days (ignoring colons), since JRiver adds that colon with Zone names of client libraries.
For now the easiest thing is just to rename the zone to JukeBox Patio (without the colon.)

I put a lot of work into creatively getting music search to work with lots of variations of symbols and digits (none of which Alexa recognizes), but for now the zone control just looks to see if there's a zone named as you said it.



Alexa only hears words, so symbols, uncommon abbreviations, odd spellings (e.g., PCZone) she's not going to pass along correctly.

Really, the whole challenge of the program is that people have always tagged their music for visual interfaces, not spoken ones. For a visual interface, it doesn't matter if you called a playlist   "TopHits!!!-I-luv-the-most"...but it's hard to get at that with voice. In the end, there will be some cases -- though not yours -- where things will just need to be renamed to be voice accessible.

[kensn]

My Zone is called Patio.
The PC name is Jukebox.
JRiver names it JukeBox: Patio
I do not use : in any Zone name.

Ken

[sarkonovich]

Ken,

I understand, I hope. But I might be missing something.

I think -- I could be wrong -- that you can rename the zone on your client PC even though JRiver assigns the name "Jukebox: Patio." I think you can rename it to whatever you want.

I'll fix the colon thing in the program over the weekend, though. But I'd be curious if rename the zone on your client works.

Steve