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FAMILY AND ECHO ALEXA

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FAMILY AND ECHO ALEXA

Plan

Family

Country

 UK

 

 

My Question or Issue

 

I pay £14.99/month for family subscription. I have 2 Alexas and an Echo Dot. I can't wok out how to have spotify running on each Alexa device, but different music on each through Spotify. We can only seem to access Spotify on one device at a time. Please can soebody advise if we can do this and if so, how. I don't want to play the same music as my sons!

 

Reply
77 Replies
Marked as solution

Hey all,

 

If you're interested in using multiple Alexa speakers at the same time, you'll need to not only have separate Spotify accounts, but also separate Amazon accounts. 

 

If you'd like you can create an Amazon Household which allows you to have multiple profiles in the same account, and you can link your Spotify account to your own Household profile and use the smart speaker you want, even if someone else is using another one in the house.

 

Take a look here for more info.

 

Hope it helps. Let us know if you have further questions.

 

Have a nice day!

This is not a workable solution for a family with young children. Please look into doing better.

Have to agree with someGuy22. For Spotify to suggest that the workable solution is for each family member; including minors, to have both a Spotify and amazon account is ridiculous. This product is not "Premium for Family". This product is "Premium for Family ... Oh, expect for families with young children 'cause screw you guys!".

It would be helpful if you put up a link on how to do this, we have two amazon accounts and a family Spotify account, still searching for what I need to do

Hey there @rowets

 

Thanks for reaching out - help’s here!
 

Do you mind checking out this help page? It includes useful steps on how to connect your Spotify account to your Alexa device. You'll also find a link to the Amazon help site, in case you need further assistance.   

 

Hope this helps. Keep us posted. 

But doesn't help re Family issue that that this thread highlights

Thanks for the link, I've got it setup so my wife can play her spotify account (family membership) on the alexa in the kitchen whilst I play using my account on a different alexa.

However, she has to keep swapping to her account manually by saying 'Alexa, swap accounts'. The alexa recognises her voice but apparently it's not possible to automatically swap accounts based on voice.

Also, when she is using her account, none of the lights etc can be controlled. So she would have to switch back to my account, the music would probably stop, turn on the light, switch back to her account and then carry on with music.

This is an awful implementation, really disappointed. I like Spotify but I'm seriously thinking of moving to the Apple music where people are saying you don't have these problems 😞 What can be done to improve this?

 

 

 

Agreed. Why have a family acct if I can’t use it for my family on different devices? 

I just signed up for Spotify Family today, 1 month free trial, and this is the first thing I wanted to try to do (we're an Amazon household with 4 people and a number of Echo devices). The fact that it's impossible to have my kids link to their own Spotify accounts using our Alexa/Echo devices is a non-starter for me; I'll use the trial for a month but will likely go and see what Apple Music can do.

Hello, 

 

My solution. Spotify family has 6 accounts. If you have one spare account create one for Alexa. Link this new account to Alexa. If you want to use your Spotify account with Alexa say Spotify Connect before listening to music. If not if you ask Alexa to play music it will use the Alexa one.

 

You can filter explicit content in this Alexa account and also add it to the Family Mix. it is not an ideal solution but it is better than nothing.

 

Regards,

Carlos

 

 

Carlos gave the solution guys...
Thank you about that @crramirez

He gave a workaround... it may address his needs, and that's great. It doesn't address mine, and Spotify doesn't seem interested in solving this problem, so I cancelled my Spotify account and have moved on.

Is this not an Amazon issue though not a Spotify decision, as on Google Home you can have a different Spotify account linked to each profile with voice match? Amazon have decided to restrict voice match to Amazon Music only and therefore only one Spotify account can be linked to the device owner. The only workaround I can think of is to have an Amazon account per speaker and link different Spotify accounts in the family plan to the corresponding room. However this defeats the point in having a personalised music subscription as you wouldn’t be able to access your own playlists using voice.
If only a single ‘home’ Spotify account is linked to all devices then as soon as someone wants to play music in another room it will stop playing in the first room. 
Until Amazon fix this I am moving back to Google Home devices as I don’t want to be tied in to Amazon subscriptions for everything, plus I have spent years building up my Spotify playlists. 

If anyone has any suggestions please share!

It’s very disappointing to discover this thread and see the attitude from Spotify on this issue.  There has to be huge numbers of homes with kids growing up that will want to have echos in their own rooms and wanting to be able to listen to music they want to be able to listen to.

 

like other I currently have 3 echos in my house that are all under my account which control all the lights, the thermostat, various WiFi plugs, tv etc and my wife has her amazon account linked to mine via household.  That way we can both control everything no matter which account the echo we are talking to, can play music to all echos as multiroom, call call the kids for tea etc.  However if we want our own music we make sure we’re in our own account (so I get access to my Spotify and the wife gets her amazon music).  I’ve now bought another two echo dots for each of my girls so they can listen to music in their rooms.  I was planning on signing up for Spotify family so each can have their own playlists and can play music at the same time.

 

Having read this thread I see that this isn’t possible unless I keep the new echos off the same setup as the rest of the house (so no control of lights, can’t be included in multiroom etc) and they have completely independent accounts (which also means I can’t control the volume, when the echos go into Do Not Disturb mode).  They are both too young to have their own phones so it’s not an option to use the other workarounds suggested already.

 

Surely it can’t be the case that Spotify’s position is, that in order to get the family music setup people are looking for they need to drop a huge portion of the functionality of the devices they have paid for???  If that is the case they are pushing away so many paid members to other services - talk about bad business!!!

From what you’ve said, i think everything you’ve stated is correct

To me it looks like the design is flawed or hampered by the fact that Spotify insist on having only one concurrent stream whereas Apple music i think has at least two (not sure of the detail, it’s just what I’ve read). But from what i understand, if you already have a load of music in iTunes that you’ve purchased, subscribing to Apple’s streaming service really screws things up - so that isn’t an option either

So my wife has given trying to use her Spotify account on the Alexa as the implementation is just too poor/complicated trying to swap accounts all the time, she’s now using head phones to her iPhone instead because Spotify won’t fix this issue

I’m wondering if going down the route of a Pebble and setting up a different Apple streaming account might be the way forward - Spotify are just too stubborn/not interested in the issues we’re having with their software

Pretty terrible “solution.”

Agree this is a terrible "solution." It breaks a ton of functionality - ie can't play on all devices, can "drop-in" etc.

 

Sounds like a great reason to drop Spotify and go with Amazon music.

This is what I find frustrating:

Preferred music service: Spotify. Why? Works impeccable with Alexa and my Sonos speaker. Also a nice Android app for Sony TV's (works well if you have a soundbar).

The issue with this service is that multiple Alexa devices won't work with Spotify Family Plan.

 

I've stopped my Spotify Family Plan and I'm now signed up for 30 days free Amazon Music Unlimited (Family Plan).

The great thing is that it works with multiple Alexa speakers.

However, in Australia/NZ, Amazon Music isn't listed in the Sonos desktop app. Therefore, I can't play through the Sonos speaker. Also, no Android app for Sony TV's.

 

Next to try would be Apple Music. It's available in the Sonos app. They haven't got an Android app for Sony TV's though. However, if I can stream to multiple Alexa devices through an Apple Music Family Plan, I'll have to make the switch.

 

Last one to try would otherwise be Tidal. It's available in the Sonos app. They've got an Android app for Sony TV's.

However, I'm unsure if you can stream to multiple Alexa devices through their family plan.

 

It's pretty frustrating as a user who's happy to pay, to have all these options, but none of them ticks all the boxes.

 

In an ideal world, I would go back to Spotify in a heartbeat, but if they don't play well with multiple Alexa devices (unless you have to do some crazy workarounds), then I guess I need to go for the Apple Music option.

We have a Spotify Family account and MANY Echo devices. I created a separate Spotify account (taking away one of the 6 allowed accounts) just for the Echo devices. That avoids the issue of others messing up the preferred songs/playlists of my account. However, this still limits streaming to just one Echo device at a time. If somebody else tries to stream it will cut them off. I understand I could create separate Amazon accounts and associate each Spotify account with a particular Amazon account. However, not only do I not want to give the kids their own Amazon account (too young) but why do I need to do this just so I can play multiple Spotify accounts (to which I am entitled to)  on multiple devices. It appears there is some solution by telling Alexa to switch accounts but that's really cumbersome. Initially I thought Amazon is purposely limiting Spotify to promote their service but it seems this works works as expected with Apple. Hence, apparently this is an issue with Spotify....

Thanks.
So basically I should be able to this with an Apple Music family
subscription?

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