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Premium Family and Alexa

Premium Family and Alexa

Plan

Free/Premium

Country

Belgium

 

Device

Sonos, Echo Dot

 

My Question or Issue

I have a Spotify Premium Family account. So we should be able to play each on different devices different music. This does not work. It stops playing when another song is activated on another device.  And also a second question : All the Alexa devices have the same Alexa account ( so they are connected ) , but can I use 1 Alexa device for 1 family member, and another device for another family member? 

Reply
32 Replies

Hey @Marleenvd thanks for reaching out to the Spotify Community,

 

Because of the fact you can only play songs on one device at a time on Spotify, you will have to connect each device to a seperate Spotify account.

 

Best,

Jack 🙂

Thanks, Jack, that is an option for Spotify. But my Alexa devices are on the same Alexa-account ( or they can't communicate with each other, which is the goal of having Alexa ), and I think I can only use 1 Spotify-account on my Alexa-account.

Hey @Marleenvd.

 

Thanks for getting back to us, and apologies for the late reply!

 

Yes, that's right - each member of the family has to have their own Alexa account linked to their own Spotify account in order to be able to listen to Spotify on their respective devices.

 

Here are the instructions on how to link each Spotify account to its respective Alexa account.

 

Or you could try creating 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.

 

Lastly you can give the command -  "Alexa, Spotify Connect" to the specific speaker and follow the instructions that follow.

 

Hope that helps! Let us know if you have any more questions about this.

 

Happy listening 🙂

Hi,

I have 5 echo in my house, two kids and a wife. Each time someone ask music in there room, Alexa stop music in initial place. It works with Amazon music family account. Why not with Spotify? 

 

This is real shame Spotify did not think to solve that

Actually this is the only subscription I have that makes those kind of issues.

What is the idea of having family account if you cannot listen in separate per user??

Sadly I think I will go back to use Amazon Music.

This is why I have both Amazon Music and Spotify.  Amazon Music is awesome for playing music with Alexa (8 Echos & 5 people), but is terrible in any other scenario.  Spotify is awesome in most scenarios, but making it the default Alexa music source is a recipe for great frustration.  Spotify was my Alexa default music source for about one day: My wife stopped home for lunch and played music on the Echo, which killed the music I was streaming at work.

 

Once either service fixes their issue, I'll cancel the other.  Honestly, I think Spotify can fix their issue much easier than Amazon.  Amazon Music's apps are terrible and need complete re-writes.

I have used Spotify for years.

I thought the point of Spotify family was to allow a family to listen to music when they want. 

The inability of the service to deal with smart speaker\home issues is a real pain. 

Its a single household, we should be able to listen in multiple rooms at the same time without assigning the devices to individuals.

Hey folks - help's here!
 

It should be possible to have each account in the Premium Family plan linked to a separate Alexa account.

This will allow each Spotify account to use its own Alexa-enabled speaker without other accounts interrupting playback.

 

Do you mind checking out the steps in this support article and seeing if this resolves your issue?

Let us know how it goes! We'll be here in case you need any further help.

I have the same problem an I think many users have. If I am driving and listening music and my wife at home says "Alexa play this and that", my music stops. The reason for that is, that you can theoretically switch Alexa accounts bevore starting a song but you don't do that if you want to listen to a song spontaneously. So I have to pull over (because I don't want to use my phone while driving), go into the app and restart my playlist. Than I call my wife, tell her to switch accounts before starting a song. When that happens a few times, there will be a divorce and we won't need a family account anymore. So why can't it work like that: X family members means X devices at the same time. Or would that be to simpel? If it stays like that, I will switch to amazon again.

Can you clarify, you said to be able to play their own spotify accounts playlists etc, that each alexa device would need to be logged into by their separate spotify account and their own Alexa account. Do you mean Amazon account or is there such a thing as an Alexa account?

 

And can that spotify login be one thats part of a family plan. So I have my login, my son, and wife have their own logins. All the alexas are on one amazon account.

I am hoping as I set up my sons Alexa, thatits tied to our families Amazon account and his spotify login, it will play his playlists etc and not step on our other alexas signed into other spotify logins (same family account)

I need to have the ability to use spotify family premium for multiple family members to control my smart home, which includes multiple echo devices.

 

Currently, it appears multiple family premium users cannot operate in an echo environment that uses a sing amazon account. And, using multiple amazon accounts messes with the operations of smart devices within my smart home.

 

Please let me know if there is a way to make this work.

 

Thanks.

Hi all,

 

A very similar issue has been driving me mad for ages but I may have stumbled across a solution / workaround for our specific case. Hopefully it is relevant for you too. Apologies for the ramble!!!

 

Our setup - We have a single Amazon Account (my wife's). In the Alexa App on her phone we have linked this Amazon Account to a Spotify Family "Admin" Account (again my wife's). Then within her Spotify Family account she has added a further 3 family "Member" accounts for myself and our 2 boys. In the house we have 4 Amazon Echo's, all connected to the same Amazon Account (my wife's). Each of us has a mobile phone with the Spotify app installed.

 

Our issue - we were not able to listen to different music on different Echo devices at the same time e.g. my wife could be listening to her music in the Kitchen, but if one of the boys came along and started playing music in their room or I played the music in the car, the kitchen music would stop.

 

To resolve this:-

 

- Ensure that all member of the household login to their own Spotify Member accounts on the Spotify App on their mobile phones and setup their own playlists in their own accounts. In our case we had all managed to sign in to my wife's account on our phones and setup playlists in her account, even though we paid for Spotify Family. Sounds like an impossible mistake to make but we did it!

 

- Pair / connect the Spotify App on each of your mobile phones to the Echo device you want to play music on. To do this say "Alexa, Spotify Connect" to the specific Echo you want to listen to music on and follow the instructions that Alexa gives you. This allows my wife, myself and our boys to each play music from our own Spotify accounts / playlists onto a different Echo, all at the same time. Tested and works well

 

Words of warning

 

- When you do use the "Spotify Connect" command, I found it best to keep Spotify closed whilst you ask Alexa, then open Spotify when she tells you to. If you don't, the connection between Spotify App & Echo isn't always made.

 

- each of our Spotify App's do tend to forget some of the Echo devices over time, so you may have to repeat the "Alexa, Spotify Connect" command from time to time. 

 

- If you want the full voice controlled playing of music simply by speaking to Alexa, then i'm afraid this solution does not work for the Spotify Member accounts. For us only my wife has this luxury because it is her Spotify Admin Account which is linked to Amazon in the Alexa App. To achieve this for everyone, you would all need an Amazon account but then you lose the point of a house full of Echos and the benefits that brings

 

So whilst it is not perfect, it works for us and allows us to get all the benefits of the Echos around our home, plus the use of Spotify on them, which in my view is the best music app out there. Having to occasionally ask Alexa to "Spotify Connect" and click the odd button on my phone is for me a small price to pay for the best of both worlds.

 

Hopefully this has solved some of the difficulties that some of you are having. Oh and by the way, why don't Spotify tell you any of this!!

 

Happy New Year!

We used Google Play Music Family for years. Decent service. Everyone in the family could play anywhere. No probs. Only, it had no Alexa integration. We now have echo's in every room of the house, so I decided to switch.

 

We've had Amazon Music Family for about 6 months now. Even though the Echo's are all assigned to a single Amazon account, we could play different music in each Echo at the same time. I could even do it while listening to music in the car or at work. Only problem is that the Amazon service fails in a large number of other features. 

 

I am currently trying out Spotify Premium ( trial basis ). I am incredibly impressed with the service and the app. I was giddy. Every feature I've ever wanted was there. Then I integrated it to my Amazon Alexa. I was listening to music in my bedroom and it just quit. Then I realized it was because my daughter was trying to play music in her room. I was dumbfounded... until I started realizing what was going on. My reaction: "I can't believe they don't support this!". That's right... I just found my dream music service, but they dropped the ball in what is quickly becoming the most common usage scenario. There is no way I'm using a service where my music in the car or at work will be interrupted simply because one of my family members played music in their room's Echo. When it comes down to it, Spotify is so afraid of people sharing their account that they have crippled the experience for the ones actually paying for the service. 

 

@Peter (the Spotify Moderator), I just searched the community board and noticed you have been giving the same answer for about a year. There is no way I'm splitting our Amazon Echo's into different Amazon accounts just so we can enjoy our music. Basically would break the integrated Echo experience (communication, home automation, etc) just to support your platform. At this time I believe my trial of Spotify is over until unlimited play from Echo devices for a single Amazon account is supported. 

Hi, your issues sound exactly like mine.

 

Just wondered if you had read my previous post above? Whilst the workaround is not perfect, and relies on the use of a phone / table / device logged in to each spotify account, it works well for us.

 

Good Luck

 

 

I did, and it sounds like an option. Unfortunately, my trial is of a single premium account, not family. I might upgrade to family and try it out. 

 

Thanks for the help!!

this doesn’t answer the topic of the question at all

The instructions are fine for connecting my account, but how do I specify a specific user to the device.  In our case we have three family members and I created a fourth called Living Room.   We only have a single Echo Dot and I want it to be the Living Room member of our family account.  How do I assign that?  Right now its defaulted to my profile as I connected the app I assume.  Do I need a phone with the app just to accomplish this?

Well... I finally switched over to the full family plan. I created accounts for everyone. That said, I can't get this to work. My Echos are all in one account and linked to the Spotify 'master account'. If I walk over to an Echo with a different account and say "Spotify Connect" it tells me to open Spotify and look for the device, but it does not show my any of my Echos. My phone is connected to my local wifi.

 

Oh well... guess we'll use Bluetooth, just like we did with Google Music. 

 

Edit: It worked!!!! On the 10th try... but it worked!!!

I'm glad you guys are focusing on the problem! But i think the easiest solution for both Spotify and customers would be to just allow concurrent streaming regardless of sign-in account or device. Video streaming services like Vudu have no problem with this, why does Spotify? 

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