Alexa Skills are passé. Voicing a bedtime story or offering “backstage access” on Alexa feels old hat. What you want to be is the face of Alexa. Literally.

That is what Billie Eilish has achieved – having her face (from the cover of Happier Than Ever, her second album) wrapped around the Echo Studio smart speaker and her name stamped on the top.

It ties into a wider promotion by Amazon whereby buyers of the Eilish edition speaker, which sells for $299.99, get a six-month subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited rolled into the price.

Because she has partnered with Amazon on this, will requests to play her music on Google Nest or HomePod be roundly ignored by their in-built voice assistants who feel they have been snubbed?

“Echo Studio is perfect for listening to Billie Eilish’s latest collection of songs in spatial audio, a multidimensional audio format available to Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers that adds space, clarity, and depth to music, so you hear sound from every direction,” says Amazon on the product listing.

The mention of “spatial audio” here is interesting given that it is a feature Apple Music is heavily pushing on its offering. Having a celebrity be the actual face of it could give Amazon an extra advantage here.

This all risks moving into the kind of territory that one might typically associate with Kiss, the Krusty The Clowns of kabuki-lite rock ’n’ roll. Kiss are, it is fair to say, not shy about putting their names and faces on pretty much anything that can be sold – from skateboards and pong tables to cornholes and coffins (yes, the Kiss Kasket exists).

Historically artists only got involved with being “the face” of speakers if they were brands like Marshall or Peavey. Even then there was no limited-edition Marshall stack with the face of Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend or Eddie from Iron Maiden stuck on the front. That said, Marshall really missed a trick by not going to an “11” edition of its speakers with a gormless Nigel Tufnel stuck on the front.