There is no limit to the fun you can have with your Amazon device if what you want to do all day is listen to music. The voice assistant Alexa lets you stream music from several sources the way you want them. There are many music services to select from that offer millions of songs for all music lovers out there. Additionally, an echo device will automatically link to Amazon Music, giving access to many songs for free.
Further reading: What Is Alexa And What Does Alexa Do?
Music Services From Amazon
There are three options to enjoy Amazon music – Amazon Music Free, Amazon Music Prime, and Amazon Music Unlimited. Amazon Music Free is an ad-supported service that does not require any subscription or deposit and is available in the US, UK, and Germany. This is a free service where you can get around two million songs. In countries other than these, you can give the command “Alexa, play some music” to enable free Amazon Music Unlimited for 14 days.
Amazon Prime members have access to Amazon Music Prime, which gets enabled if you have a Prime subscription. Here again, you have a limited option of playing two million songs. Though it is free of ads, it does not support some interesting features.
Amazon Music Unlimited lets you play over 75 million songs, and Alexa caters to all the music commands it understands. This is a crucial feature absent in the other services. If you just own a single device, you can opt for a Single Device Plan. Other plans are the individual plan that streams the same music to all the devices and the Family plan that lets you stream up to 6 different songs on your devices.
Other Music Services
Spotify is a popular music streaming service with Spotify Free and Spotify Premium. Whichever service you choose, it can stream music directly from the Spotify app on your phone to any Amazon device. Both the services give access to around 50 million songs. The only difference is that Spotify Free supports ads.
Other music services supported by Amazon devices are TuneIn, Pandora, and iHeartRadio services, to name a few. But here, you may face limitations around selecting your favorite music and music playback control.
Setting Up Alexa Music Services
Further reading: How Long Will Alexa Play Music Before Turning Off
If you have more than one music service opted, you have to first link all of them. You can then select one of them as the default service. Follow these steps to link a music service.
- Open the Amazon Alexa app and press the ‘More’ button
- Select ‘Settings’ and then select ‘Music & Podcasts’
- Press ‘Link New Service’ and select the music service you wish to link
- Press ‘Enable to use’ and type in the music service account information
- Tap Done
Linking the music services has been successfully done. You can now give voice commands to Alexa to play from any music service.
For example, you can say ‘Alexa, Play music on Spotify’ or ‘Alexa, Play music on Amazon Music.’
Setting A Music Service As Default
As already mentioned, you can set one music service as the default option so that you need not specify the service name every time you give voice commands. Follow these steps to set service as default.
- Open the Amazon Alexa app and press ‘More.’
- Select ‘Settings’ and then select ‘Music & Podcasts’
- Press ‘Default Services’ and then press ‘Change’ in the Music section
- Tap on the desired music service.
Now you can give voice commands without specifying the name of the music service. For example, you can say, ‘Alexa, play soft music.’
Below are some of the voice commands you can give Alexa.
‘Alexa, Play [emotion] music’
‘Alexa, Play{playlist name}’
‘Alexa, Play [song/album/artist]’
‘Alexa, Play [song] from Prime Music.’
‘Alexa, Play [station name].’
Stream Music From Your Phone
It is possible to stream songs stored in your mobile phone to the Amazon device via Bluetooth. Keep your phone near the device and say ‘Alexa, Pair’ for the device to go into pairing mode. Open the Bluetooth settings on your phone and wait for the device name to appear. Once it appears, tap the name to make the connection.
Now open any music app on your phone and play the music played through the Amazon device. To change the song, you can either give voice commands to Alexa or control playback using the device.
To end the pairing of the devices, say, ‘Alexa, disconnect from [name of the device]’. After disconnecting, Alexa will say, ‘Now disconnected from [name of the device]’. If you want to reconnect later, say, ‘Alexa, connect to [name of device]’. Alexa’s response will be ‘Searching. Now connected to [name of device]’.
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Stream Music From Your PC
You can even stream music from your PC. Firstly, ensure that Bluetooth is enabled on the PC. Go to the Amazon Alexa page and log in with your Amazon account.
Go to Settings and tap on the name of your device. Select Bluetooth and tap on ‘Pair a New Device’ to connect the computer with the Amazon device. Click on your computer name when it appears on the list of devices. You will get a notification on the PC asking for confirmation. Click Allow. Close the Pair Device window once the pairing is done. Now when you play music on your computer, it will be heard through the Amazon device.
To end the pairing, go to Bluetooth settings on your PC, tap the name of the Amazon device and click the disconnect button. If you wish to reconnect later, say, ‘Alexa, reconnect [name of computer]’ or click the connect button.
Summary
If you really dig deep, you can find some really amazing features of Alexa that can elevate your music experience. Playing your favorite track is just the tip of the iceberg. More features are being added regularly to keep audiophiles happy and asking for more.