[Amazon Alexa] Swap Spotify accounts without changing Alexa account

[rowets]

I have a Spotify Family account for myself and my wife

I have an alexa unit in every room, every unit is using MY amazon account as all the lights and home automation can only be setup on one Amazon account

I want to play Spotify in the room i’m in

My wife wants to play her music in a different room

Both myself and my wife also want to use the home automation whilst playing music, eg, turning on the lights

This can be done using Apple music and Amazon music but Spotify require to swap to a different spotify account for the other person

To swap to a different spotify account means changing the Alexa profile of the alexa device and then all the home automation no longer works from that device. 

Please can you allow both myself and my wife to play music in different rooms WITHOUT having to change the Amazon Alexa account

It would be great if I could say ‘Alexa, play spotify from Trevors account’ and my wife could say in a different room, at the same time, ‘Alexa, play spotify from Jackie’s account’ 

This is not a duplicate of other suggestions, I’ve checked and anything close was raised before the ability to swap alexa accounts was implemented. Swapping alexa accounts is only a work around and is not a solution to this problem.

Many people want this feature and your chat team said I should raise it here

Here is a link to the forum, lots of people are leaving spotify because only spotify do not support this feature, you guys need to catch up

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Premium-for-Family/FAMILY-AND-ECHO-ALEXA/m-p/4900618#M26242

From my research it seems there is talk about Spotify only has one concurrent music stream whereas Apple and Amazon music have multiple streams, but please can you improve on this, the thread above was started over 18 months ago, something should be done to improve on this issue

Again, please don’t write this off as a duplicate and do nothing/say it relates to a 3rd party, people still want this feature

Thanks

Trevor Rowe

19/2/2021

Folks, just a quick update on this.

Spotify say this

The Community team talks with various other Spotify teams several times a month about ideas with over 500 votes (our criteria for being a top idea). It’s from these meetings that we apply one of the following statuses to each idea….

This idea has reached over 500 votes so I asked on chat for timescales/what will happen next and was told to keep an eye on this thread.

That really sounded open ended!

As the person on chat could only deal with app and account queries, I was told to also contact the support team to get action on this

So as well as voting for this issue (please continue), 

Spotify need to keep up with Apple and Amazon and fix this issue - with your help we might just get this solved!

[Xtotoy]

Fixed or implemented…

Noticed recently the Alexa app shows me tabs of the family members and lets me choose the news subjects they like… no option for music but perhaps progress?  

[shakeheartbreak]

Sadly I don't think that's any progress at all - what's happened there is purely on the Alexa side, it's nothing to do with Spotify.

Amazon made the API available years ago to implement this - but Spotify just won't.  I imagine most users don't even realise that Spotify doesn't work this way on Alexa and their music just gets muddled between accounts in the same household.

[Rawbo]

I'm about to go to another service! My daughter keeps accidentally highjacking my music stream while I'm at the gym!!! It's throwing me off my groove which is dangerous because I'm disabled and when I get distracted bad things can happen. I've told her to use Amazon music instead but she forgets. Maybe we should switch to Apple music or tradition completely to Amazon music??

[rowets]

That’s what i did, went over to Apple music

It’s different but once you get the hang of the changes then it’s ok

Along with this problem, when I did things like adding a doorbell to alexa it would screw up the lights in the lounge, i decided to move away from alexa and spotify.

Both spotify and the alexa department have been making jobs cuts and we’re not getting the support we need!

Much happier now i made the jump, Apple music, Apple homepods + Sonos speakers is much more reliable for me

[Ljgwheeler]

@Rawbo We tried this (going all in on Amazon Music) and its probably fine if you don't use the cast feature. Casting music from the Amazon Music app to Alexa / Echo speakers (via eero network) was riddled with issues (disconnections, music suddenly stopping, error messages) such that always had to force-stop the app, clear cache and the like to be able to reset the casting connection. Spotify for all its faults (this thread being a huge one) is way better than Amazon at casting from app to Alexa.

[sdeftink]

@Rawbo my brother is tetraplegic and yes bad things can happen quickly.  😁

As I previously posted, we ditched Spotify and moved to Amazon Music family.  Multi-streaming worked perfectly...but...it's worth noting Amazon Music multi-streams from the primary account despite being a family plan, having an Amazon Household setup and properly configured, voices configured and recognized, blah blah blah.  In short, you still have to remember to switch profiles to play your specific playlist(s) and, if you just request songs by artists or types, whomever is the primary user really gains no benefits from the algorithm learning your preferences.  It was shocking the types of music Amazon thinks I like. 😳 🤣

We ended up creating our own workaround using 2 different services.  Yes it ends up costing a few bucks a month more, but peace is WELL worth it.  I still use Amazon Music and my wife went back to Spotify as it's her preference.  Both accounts are setup on the primary user so we don't have to switch profiles.  It's a matter of one user remembering that if they want to play their playlists, they have to specify the non-default music service by name when giving the command to play a playlist from their account..."Alexa play Bob Marley from Spotify".  Fortunately the one child in the house has his own preferred free streaming service and only ever uses Alexa to stream music in the shower which doesn't conflict with my using it...so we basically share my Amazon Music account.

Is it perfect?...No but it is the best we have found for our needs so far.  Admittedly I expected Amazon to do a better job of being able to determine who's asking and stream from their Amazon Music family account without having to first switch profiles.  That wasn't the case and was VERY disappointing.

[Tedunaway]

It’s now nearing the end of 2023 is there any update to this? Extremely frustrating.

[Xtotoy]

Alexa left our home now.  We sold the Studio and Dot speakers surprisinly quick!

Moving to Homepod + Youtube Music.  It was easy enough to move playlists to the new provider and the 99% of my smart lights,etc. were already homekit compatible.  Still a lot to learn but the music problem we had is now sorted! 

For those keen to keep Spotify, Google seems to be the only solution and I understand their assistant would do what we are after = voice recognition + family spotify + multiroom.

[brutus713]

Still nothing after LITERAL years of being aware of the problem? YIKES

[Gibber]

This has to change! Come on Spotify sort it out. I’ve only just moved to this service, looks like I’m changing again.