[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!

[shakeheartbreak]

@sdeftink

That's mostly what I thought you meant and thank you.  As such, my understanding is that #2 is the solution here given that it's what Google will have allowed for Home/Nest.  That didn't require any additional streams which I'm sure would otherwise induce higher costs and structural changes on Spotify's side.

But if #2 really is the solution then I would be surprised if there wasn't also something on the Amazon side currently preventing this - unless there are other services beyond Amazon's own that allow for immediate account/profile switching based on voice recognition?  It's not just Spotify, right?

[juhajonathan]

It’s my understanding that Amazon has opened its software so companies can attach skills to specific profiles.

Spotify has simply refused to make this function available on Echo devices. 

[shakeheartbreak]

@juhajonathan

Thanks for sharing.  Do you have a source for that?

It would help us understand (or at least confirm) where to direct all the efforts in getting this changed.

--

Edit

It looks like it might be this:

"For a single Amazon account, multiple users can link their personal accounts for your skill. Alexa can recognize the speaker and use the correct personal account based on who is speaking to Alexa, without the user having to say, "Alexa, switch accounts."

https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/custom-skills/personalization-and-account-linking.html

[beastpilot]

This is 100% Spotify's issue- not Amazon's.

This is NOT about allowing switching on an Echo. People here want to NOT have to switch accounts, as this causes all sorts of issues.

The issue here is that Spotify only allows one stream per account, even if that is a family account. This causes issues with way more than Amazon- for instance if you have a car with Spotify built in, it will stop streaming on your phone if they're on the same account.

Meanwhile, Amazon music, Apple, and Google Music all allow multiple streams on one account, and that fixes all these issues.

[shakeheartbreak]

@beastpilot

Can you elaborate on that?  On my understanding, Amazon's setup with Alexa only allows one Spotify account to be associated with one Amazon account.  So the best workaround at the moment is to sign up an additional Amazon account into your Household, link your Spotify account to that account and then manually switch to that account to play music.  Unfortunately, that's not intuitive and causes problems elsewhere too.

Using the Alexa functionality I linked to above seems like it would solve this issue.  When a request is made to the Spotify skill, it would - again, on my understanding - instantly and automatically switch the Amazon account in use in the household but not change it outright on the Echo.  This means everything else would still work including automation routines which are linked to the primary Amazon account in use in general.

Anything else would require a change in how Amazon handles accounts at the higher level.  If I'm wrong, please correct me as I don't want to spread misinformation.

--

Edit: If there's any other way to make this work then do it, Spotify! Pandora seems to have done it from the post below!!

[Swaguimongui]

hello I write on this discussion forum hoping that Spotify will see my message, pandora made the possibility of putting several accounts (family) on an Amazon account with the voice profiles, I do not know how they did it but it seems to me it's a novelty of the skill, it works really well we can select a family account, a personal account and Alexa will play the account of the person who speaks, it's great I hope Spotify will do the same...

 

 

 

 

 

[Swaguimongui]

@Shakeheartbreak

C’est ça

https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/custom-skills/personalization-and-account-linking.html

[shakeheartbreak]

@Swaguimongui

Yes, I agree - that seems to be the same developer link I shared a few posts earlier. That seems like it might be what Pandora used too.

Fix this, Spotify!

[AzzX]

Any Update from Spotify in this issue?

[shakeheartbreak]

Nothing yet.  I'm on the chat to support about it now.  I suggest you do the same and make your voices heard, it's the only way they'll prioritise it!