Unknown remix of "California Girls" by The Beach Boys on Amazon Echo? So bad my kid stopped it..

This all makes me wonder what will become the "definitive" versions of classic tracks in the future. The original that was successful, or a later remix, re-recording or live version? Will future generations, when checking out a classic track hear a later version? If so, that later version over time "becomes" the track. It all seems to be at the whim of the algorithms used by the AI.

I haven't bothered with Alexa for a while, but I seem to remember that I asked it to play New Order's Blue Monday, and it didn't play the classic original, but the 1988 remix. Surely the original version of any track should be the default when you ask for that track without specifying a remix or live version.

This also shows up the short-comings of voice interfaces - there's no practical way for the device to present a list of options ("which version do you want to hear?"); it just has to pick one and hope it's what you wanted. But the user of the device is none the wiser, and will assume (unless they already know otherwise) that this is the standard version of the track.

 

Maybe after the Super Bowl parade, maybe mummers music will be there in the near future.

GO BIRDS
E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!

 

He could use a bit of variety.....not to mention he’s not the only person in the car.

 

Why auto-matching on streaming services is bad, part 1,111:

When I uploaded my rip of Beatles for Sale (2009 stereo if you care) to Google Play, the version of ‘Eight Days A Week’ it matched to from its database was a Beatles tribute band version. You can’t turn it off, or force the correct version to upload, only flag the mismatch and wait - I had to live with this blemish for weeks until it decided to right itself.

Same with this Alexa situation- it just matches your upload metadata to whatever version it holds in its database to save upload time, and streams that instead.

 

I have never been a fan of With a Little Help, but after six weeks when he finally let the title song play out and then progress to track 2 I became the biggest fan of that song on the entire planet!!!

 

In the early days of FM dominance, many "Magic"-type stations promised "your favorite hits....in stereo-o-o-ooo!". And what this led to were pockets of listeners all around the country, enjoying the wrong mixes/versions/artists: Neil Diamond with horn parts; Beatles over here, drums over there; artists re-singing their big ones either for stereo, or a new record label. Along came music services for radio such as Century 21, and several different format flavors of their "Hit Disc" series: a valient effort, but not always as engineered as they could have been. But even after the right versions seemed to be the Pokemon of Oldies Music Directors ("gotta catch 'em all"), many entire markets of Oldies fans gradually had their memories of what first came out of their dashboard speakers, re-written slightly. Oldies stations just about stopped all the leaks for the most part (although you might hear a song in afternoon drive occasionally that might sound different on the Mike Harvey show Saturday night)...and then the Oldies format suddenly got torpedoed all accross the country, starting with many of the CBS O&O's, around the turn of the century.

Now, with so many versions of so many compilations of so many reissue campaigns of so many reconfigurations of so many Greatest/Best-of/Anthology collections, it's no wonder Alexa gets it wrong so often. And, Alexa isn't even an Oldies fan - she's an algorhithm, faced with far too many answers to the same question everytime it gets asked. So, Alexa defers to (probably) whatever answer Amazon Prime Music feeds "her". And Amazon Prime Music is also faced with far too many answers to the same question everytime it's queried, so, there's another leyer of complexity there.

And, is anybody real, as in human being, in charge of sorting it out? Well, not if that's only one of myriad work-smarter-not-harder tasks on a list on a desktop on a motitor on the desk of some poor intern somewhere deep in the bowels of....wherever. Young Chad here, cannot be faulted for not being able to sort seventeen different masterings of Pet Sounds just so Steve Hoffman's kid can enjoy his bath.

So no, I don't think there's an easy, ergonomic, elegant, low-cost solution here.

Unless of course, Amazon enters into a partnership with Google, to dispatch their Google-Earth cars across the nation to various Wal-Marts, where many qualified Oldies experts are found, working as blue-vested Greeters...!

 

Guys, 99% of people out there do not care or know about "versions" of songs. They just want to hear the songs. We are in a very small minority here.

 

Totally right...except that 99% of the time thing. Just because the difference cannot be identified by the listener, does not mean they don't have a perception "something is wrong". No, it is not going to be enough for a kid in an average household where a mastering engineer does not live, to say "turn it off"; but there are degrees of tolerance, irritation and those little gradiations of "something's wrong" in-between that most certainly do not go above people's heads 99% of the time.

I relalize sweeping generalities don't sound quite a sweeping when it's say, 75% instead of 99% (or 70%, or 65%, or 60%, etc ad nauseum ad infinitum), and quibbling about percentages does take the p*ss out of a good discussion. But I guarantee you, "99%" of average, casual, noncommittal, normal, regular people also don't care about how good their concert seats are, once they get into the auditorium and lay their coats back on their chair...until that spoilsport walks up to them with his ticket in hand, and says, "Dude - you're in my seat."

We may be in a very small minority here...but, we are not a very small minority...here.

 

The now deleted 2012 remasters in general were incredibly harsh. I'm so happy that Mark Linnet has seemingly listened to the complaints as his recent mastering work has been far more palatable.

Yes, that's probably a good idea. My grandfather got the 2012 "Greatest Hits" set about a year ago, which is a single disc distilling of the 2-disc "50BO" set, and they are incredibly bright indeed. You'd be better off creating your own comp with that tracklist using better masters.

 

I thought that's what we all!? My new job has me working from 8 pm to 6 am. A couple times a week I create playlists scouring through the best-sounding material I have. Sometimes Ill do some judicious eq-ing to enhance the sound from my mp3 player. Good thing I have thousands of CDs and a vast collection of needledrops to glean from. Ron

PS I use Steve's old DCC Endless Summer and Spirit of America discs, then pick and choose stuff from the Smile and Pet Sounds boxsets... sounds good through my Sennheiser 'phones

 

The studio version of "California Girls" has always bothered me. It seems too slow, and Brian sounds goofy on the falsetto line in the chorus. I've read that he wasn't happy with his singing on this song either. My favorite version might be the 1980 Live at Wembley, although Brian is inaudible.

 

Hey Alexa play Rock On!

 

Get a Google home Hoffman.

 

Sure, they don't care consciously, but there are reasons a track was a hit and reasons other ones weren't. Partly it's the song itself, but it's also as much to do with the performances, arrangement and mix. If someone wants to listen to Hit X from Bygone Year and gets a crap remix, live version, re-recording or even a cover by a tribute band, they might think "that band's not as good as I remember them". Or when a younger person checks out Hit Y from Bygone Year on Alexa and then goes "hmm... that's terrible, I won't bother with that artist/genre... ". That kind of thing, really.

And yes, this sort of thing has always gone on. In the early 80s, a relative of mine bought a cassette of the "Sgt. Pepper" album. It was actually a budget recording performed by some session musicians. I only found out decades later that she (still) thought she had the original album there.

But I think the situation we're talking about here is a lot worse, because if two or three streaming services become the only way to listen to music (or the only easy way to do so), then music history is at the mercy of algorithms (or at least the quality of tagging by low-level employees, as noted by Dillydipper up-thread).

 

what we havn't had a reprise yet, are turntables in vehicles!!
get rid of your ipods, sticks, Bluetooth.....
bring the awkward bad boy back! and jump n bump to the record player.

 

That sort of thing is why I always say "Alexa, play 'California Girls' mono by The Beach Boys"!

 

Largely not being able to choose the mix/mastering is why I avoid streaming.

 

Well they say an Apple doesn't fall far from it's tree.

 

I asked Alexa to play "Star" by Stealers Wheel, she played a "remastered" version that sounded totally wrong. From what I read later it's a re-recording with NO involvement from Gerry Rafferty or Joe Egan, and only a few of the other original members.

 

Who's Alexa?

 

I'll select and play music on my own, from my CD collection ~ it happens to be something I enjoy doing.

But if Alexa could fetch my slippers I'd be down with that

 

That's the "wake up" name given to Amazon's Echo device. As in "Alexa, play Star by Stealers Wheel".

 

No, I've heard the Sea of Tunes version, and it actually sounds good! Like how a genuine 1960's Stereo mix should sound. Nothing like the recent remix.

 

that's purely thought-manipulation being fed to the masses.