Amazon Echo - General Conference Audio Library?

Is there a way that the church could create a "music library" type of site for General Conference and other addresses where you can have a Skill for the Amazon Echo (maybe Siri and OK Google devices too) to play the audio from the library? Much like it does for Pandora, Spotify, and Amazon Music for music now.

"General Conference" being the Skill's key word...

I'm envisioning, "Alexa, play a talk from the most recent General Conference" & it would select one randomly & play the audio. Or, you could say a speaker's name & it would play a random talk from them ("Alexa, play a talk by President Uchtdorf from General Conference"). Or even reference the title, or conference session/year, topic, "a recent talk by...", or whatever, and it would be streamed on the Echo device.

"Alexa, play President Uchtdorf's talk about Grace from General Conference", and it plays [The Gift of Grace] from April 2015 (or, if multiple talks on Grace, it can give a list to choose from).
"Alexa, play a talk on Tithing from General Conference" - gives a list, or starts playing one at random.
"Alexa, play the talk by President Monson from the 2010 Priesthood session of General Conference" - and it plays it.

Etc., etc.

I don't know how to make Alexa search audio from a web site (lds.org - https://www.lds.org/search?lang=eng&dom ... .+Uchtdorf), but I think it can interact with web services if that can be developed to search through the vast archive of conference audio.

Could also be used for BYU devotionals, Women's Conference, etc., etc.

Just a thought I had since I just got an Echo recently, and this is one thing I'd love to be able to do on it.

Can Amazon Echo interact with a music/audio library on iTunes or other music programs?

It won't do iTunes right now. It does work with TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Spotify (premium), and Amazon Music & Prime right now. And it can play Audio Books from Audible.

However, you can write Skills that can interact with independent web services though, so if a web service was created for the audio already available through lds.org website, it might be able to interact with it. I'm not a programmer, but I've read up on it some. I'm betting if a programmer read up on it, it could be done.

The Alexa API for audio clips is currently limited to 90 seconds at 48 kbps. The bit rate limitation would be workable for general conference talks. The duration would be an issue.

Yeah, I've read that too. Is there a way to make some agreement with Amazon to get around that limitation? They probably did that for licensing/copywrite issues & such (don't want just anyone to be able to play anything). But if it were an officially sanctioned Church "skill"...

Or, could you make a non-iTunes podcast that could be accessible through TuneIn or something (it can play full podcast sessions there)? Maybe make each talk a different entry in the podcast?

I'm just trying to think of a way is all...

scgallafent wrote:The Alexa API for audio clips is currently limited to 90 seconds at 48 kbps. The bit rate limitation would be workable for general conference talks. The duration would be an issue.

I think the operative word here is "clip". Since the device claims to be able to play music, even playlists, it's obviously capable of playing for a longer period of time.

Honestly, I don't see the church spending any resources in doing this - but some member learning Alexa development might give it a try.

Amazon just release the API for streaming audio today. I think an alexa enabled gospel library is an awesome project. I've started on my own implementation and if anyone is interested in helping I can upload the code to github.

I do have one question. Is there an https location for the CDN content? Alexa services will only play audio from an https stream. I'm currently hosting a few conference talks on S3 to test my implementation but we could turn on https for the CDN, that would be super helpful.

thattolleyguy - I was just going to come here & post that they had released the streaming API too! Glad you saw it. I'm not a developer & never done any Alexa skills, but please keep me updated as to your progress on your skill (gsmudge-at-gmail). I would be happy to be a tester for it, or anything I could to help. I think a Gospel Library (would probably need official permission from the Church to use the audio), or even just publicly available General Conference talks only, would be a great Alexa skill for many!! Thank you!
If anyone from the Church is still paying attention to this thread, I'm not positive, but it might be that permission would be required to use the audio. But I think this is the next big thing for the Gospel Library tools the Church puts out. Amazon Echo, the upcoming Google Home, and other devices are going to be the next big thing & I think you should jump on it with maybe something official.

I have a scriptures skill written for this. But I had been holding off until I have the ability to stream the audio. So naturally, I'm curious about permissions for using the lds radio content. I don't plan on charging anything for this skill, but I don't want to do anything without permission. Nice to see multiple people considering this.

There is a "The Scriptures" skill someone put out early that uses the Alexa voice to do the text-to-voice thing for a chapter, or even a single verse. It works pretty well (as does just having her read the Book of Mormon from my Kindle library) - but the pronunciations are a bit off (Nefi instead of Nephi, etc.). It would be interesting if you could get the Bruce Lindsay readings verse-by-verse to work. Say, "Alexa, read 3rd Nephi 11 verse 8", and you get Bruce Lindsay's voice reading just that verse.

I was more looking for General Conference talks to work so I could listen to past talks while working around the house. Or they would be good for putting you to sleep as well.

Are the Bruce Lindsay recordings the ones the church produced? That's what I'm hoping to get working. I have a demo app that will do it but I have to pay to host the files myself and I'm not sure I want to do that long term. I'm also planning on supporting general conference talks. I just need to figure out the right interface for searching them.

Yes, Bruce Lindsay was a KSL anchor who, I guess, also happens to be the male voice on the Book of Mormon recordings. Fun trivia! Unfortunately, those aren't divided out by verse, so you'd need to record the start/stop positions of each verse to have only one verse played as ldssmudge suggests!

ldssmudge wrote:There is a "The Scriptures" skill someone put out early that uses the Alexa voice to do the text-to-voice thing for a chapter, or even a single verse. It works pretty well (as does just having her read the Book of Mormon from my Kindle library) - but the pronunciations are a bit off (Nefi instead of Nephi, etc.). It would be interesting if you could get the Bruce Lindsay readings verse-by-verse to work. Say, "Alexa, read 3rd Nephi 11 verse 8", and you get Bruce Lindsay's voice reading just that verse.

I was more looking for General Conference talks to work so I could listen to past talks while working around the house. Or they would be good for putting you to sleep as well.

That is my skill! I am going to create a post on it but I would love to expand it to do other talks and do streaming with it now that they have expanded the robustness of the API. I also want to expand it to do BYU Speeches. I plan to do it with the link created below. If anyone is interested please shoot me a message or respond to the other topic which I will reference once i have created it.

*** https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=96&t=25655 ***

https://developer.amazon.com/public/com ... exa-Skills

stechdev, yours is "Gospel Library Reader", I've used "The Scriptures" by Spriton Systems LLC. Either way though... I'd love to be able to listen to General Conference talks, no matter who develops it.

I got a Google Home recently, and this feature would be awesome there too! They're not releasing any of the SDKs etc until next month, but I'm starting to play with the idea.

thattolleyguy, I'd be interested to see what you've written and see if I can contribute.

haha, I was just about to start this project. No sense in duplicating work. If someone here has already started, please let me know. If not, I will continue making this for the Google Home. Thanks!

Oliver84 wrote:haha, I was just about to start this project. No sense in duplicating work. If someone here has already started, please let me know. If not, I will continue making this for the Google Home. Thanks!

I started looking into a google home implementation as well. So far I don't see any api for streaming audio files of arbitrary length. SSML allows you to select a file up to 90 seconds, but that's not really long enough for this purpose. If you find the API, I imagine we could set up a service that could support both Alexa and Google Home.

thattolleyguy wrote:I started looking into a google home implementation as well. So far I don't see any api for streaming audio files of arbitrary length. SSML allows you to select a file up to 90 seconds, but that's not really long enough for this purpose.

I know it will play songs from the Google play store, so there must be something. I guess the question is if it's been made into an API or is it strictly an internal one at this point.

Hmmm, I wonder how hard it would be to get the content added to iTunes and Google Play Store.

russellhltn wrote:

thattolleyguy wrote:I started looking into a google home implementation as well. So far I don't see any api for streaming audio files of arbitrary length. SSML allows you to select a file up to 90 seconds, but that's not really long enough for this purpose.

I know it will play songs from the Google play store, so there must be something. I guess the question is if it's been made into an API or is it strictly an internal one at this point.

Yeah. If you look into the API there is a public API for conversation actions and a private API for direct actions. You can apply to be a beta tester for the direct actions api (which is the one that supports playing music). I've applied and just waiting to hear back. https://developers.google.com/actions/d ... nversation

russellhltn wrote:Hmmm, I wonder how hard it would be to get the content added to iTunes and Google Play Store.

General Conference is in iTunes as a podcast – would that work?

My mom is going blind and we bought her the echo so she could ask the time and so forth. We also have it set up to turn on lights. It would be more than awesome if she could ask it to read the book of mormon or conference talks or music from gospel library etc!

There is a way to get Alexa to play general conference (etc.) that I don't think was already mentioned. You can upload audio files to the "My Music" section of Amazon Music. This can be done with the Amazon Music app (I am using a Mac, but I suspect the process is similar on a PC). After the file has been uploaded, you should be able to tell Alexa to play the file by its title. If you have trouble with it recognizing the name (I had trouble with "1 Nephi 02 (male voice)", just make a playlist with an easy to say name and ask Alexa to play the playlist. I only just tried this out, so I am just sharing what I've learned today.

Note that Amazon limits uploads to 250 files unless you are have an Amazon Music subscription.

I just thought about this today. It would be fun to have an general conference Alexa skill. If anyone has started one and would like some help let me know I would like to help out where I can.

Yes! We just figured it out. Go to the Alexa app. Under skills, search for Gospel Voice and enable that skill.

By saying, “Alexa, ask Gospel Voice to play General Conference” you’re able to get recommendations from Alexa or search for a specific speaker.