AbstractSince the introduction of the Amazon Echo in late 2014, smart speakers have been adopted by a wide range of households. As an “audio-first” technology, their materiality, interactivity, and ubiquity change what we mean by radioness—remediating both radio and audio streaming. This chapter investigates the radioness of smart speakers through two complementary lenses. First, it examines their impact on the music, streaming audio, and radio by analyzing media coverage of smart speakers’ adoption and impact, including market research organizations, mainstream news outlets, and the trade press. Second, it examines smart speakers as domestic artifacts, drawing on autoethnographic strategies, design thinking, and scholarship on domesticity. The domestic comfort and technological ease that smart speakers promise are animated by their nostalgic, radio-like status, but it is also their radioness that helps obscure their imbrication with the logic of contemporary big tech.
