Welcome to the future, where you wake up feeling grumpy in your apartment in Uppsala, Sweden, ask ALEXA to make you a black coffee and play you some ambient metal, and she delivers one hot cup of locally brewed joe and the entirety of the new DRAKE album. Impossible, plausible or pretty much guaranteed? I've ruled out "impossible" after reading a million or so accounts of Drake's unprecedented dominance of the streaming universe over the weekend, another million about the programming blitz across SPOTIFY and APPLE MUSIC that helped make that possible, and one story about the battle between labels and tech companies for programming control of the smart-speaker market. Bottom line #1: No one should be shocked that Drake, the closest thing we have to a universal pop music idol, is on pace to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 billion streams of his double album SCORPION in its opening week, and no one outside the odd MICHAEL JACKSON relative has any reason to complain. But if you think the numbers are entirely organic, I have a playlist in Brooklyn to sell you. Bottom line #2: If ALEXA, SIRI and their A.I. counterparts don't know your song is either happy or sad or workout-friendly or heavily prioritized by the promo department of one of their partner labels, you're going to have an uphill battle getting them to recommend you to the typical user whose request is something like, "Alexa, play me some music." Inevitable question #3: If Drake's photo can be placed atop an official Spotify playlist he isn't even on, can Alexa be employed to play "EMOTIONLESS" when you ask for that ambient metal playlist? Or when you say you need some background music while you're working? Or when you're minding your own business and you don't ask for anything? Who will that smart speaker be taking orders from: You? Your favorite tech company? Somebody's record company? The radio programmers who appear to be in charge? Is the (possibly worthwhile) goal simply to create a smarter, more personalized radio station? Who will it be personalized for?.. P.S. Smart speakers make clean and thorough metadata that much more important than it's ever been... P.P.S. The first time I listened to SCORPION, I thought the first line of the first song was "I'm gonna weigh in on this," which would've been an all-time great album-opening lyric. Alas, I realized the next time around it's "I been waitin' on this." Which is not... P.P.P.S. Co-sign on the greatness of this track from "Scorpion" disc 2... Among our friends who industry execs think would make a good replacement for NEIL PORTNOW at the RECORDING ACADEMY are JUDY MCGRATH, SUSAN GENCO and TROY CARTER. All great candidates... RADICAL.FM shuts down... RIP SMOKE DAWG, BILL HAMEL and EUGENE PITT.