Alexa's new music feature

[malliekm]

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/alexas-new-music-feature-makes-your-speakers-work-like-sonos/

I tried it, it works

[mike27oct]

Yes, it worked  -- sometimes; most times.  Not in sync so what is the point?

[scottrods]

Just read this was possible, yesterday. I like it.

[dan8379]

Yes, it worked  -- sometimes; most times.  Not in sync so what is the point?

I agree....if someone is in that room, presumably to listen to the music being played on the speaker, can't you just request it in that room?   I don't see the point of sitting in one room and requesting music in different rooms.

[scottrods]

Some people have a good use for it... I don't either, but I can see where a Young Parent with Baby in a nearby room might wake up while I am monitoring but busy witha chore nearby, they could turn on some baby favorites or something to "entertain' or occupy the baby with music... I see a HUGE love for hat having had a child once upon a time... Mine's a bit old for the need now (almost 30)... so Not gonna use it like that at all... maybe to screw with people... but other than that, I have no decent application for it... now the Multi room SHARED music signal I see the attraction to even more...

[malliekm]

Yes, it worked  -- sometimes; most times.  Not in sync so what is the point?

I agree....if someone is in that room, presumably to listen to the music being played on the speaker, can't you just request it in that room?   I don't see the point of sitting in one room and requesting music in different rooms.

I'm rarely sitting during the day.  I'm home all day but I have a house to maintain among other things so I'm in and out of various rooms most of the day.  If I'm listening to talk radio, I could have "full coverage" no matter where in the house I am.

[Yorga]

Has anyone worked out to switch this on and off? I've set it up on an Echo and two dots and it works like a charm. If I ask to play an album "Downstairs" away it goes. If I then ask to play an album (without specifying anything) it continues to play "Downstairs". If I try asking for an album on "Office Dot" it plays only on that but then asking to play an album without specifying reverts to "Downstairs".

This is the sort of thing I'd like to use once in a blue moon, I appreciate the option but I'd like it to be something that has to be specified and not the default.

Anyone had any luck?

[gothick]

Nope; I love the feature (it plays in sync for me!), but I am also struggling to turn it off! I went into the Alexa app on my phone and chose to play back only on one device, and that worked, but when I later asked my living room Echo to play, they all started back up again.

(I thought there might be a workaround in creating a "group" with a single Echo in it, but an echo can only be in one group at once, so I can't have, say, my living room Echo in both the group "Everywhere" and the group "Living room"...)

Until there's some instructions for the thing available I've deleted the multi-room group I created and things have gone back to how they were.

[tx50]

For anyone wondering how to synch.  Found this highly useful!

https://lovemyecho.com/2017/08/29/alexa-multi-room-music-us-uk/?platform=hootsuite

[drfoto]

I'm having a problem setting this up. I have four Echo Dots around the house, all active and recognized by the Alexa app on my phone. When I go to setup multiroom music and define a group, I see all 4 devices in the list as online. As soon as I check one, two of the four instantly become designated as "unreachable". Unreachable shows in different combinations depending on which of the four devices is checked first. I saw unreachable discussed under troubleshooting, but followed the instruction to reset one of the devices to correct the issue without success.

Anyone have this problem and find a solution?

[mindmagic]

I assumed this was because my two devices weren't connected to the same network; one was directly on the router on 5 GHz while the other was connected to an extender on 2.4 GHz. Connecting them both to the same network fixed the problem.

[drfoto]

I assumed this was because my two devices weren't connected to the same network; one was directly on the router on 5 GHz while the other was connected to an extender on 2.4 GHz. Connecting them both to the same network fixed the problem.

Glad this was a solution for you, however all my Echo Dots are served by the same network and all are working, with network access independently, despite this "unreachable" issue. One is Bluetooth paired with a portable speaker and I read such a connection is a no-no for the multiroom functionality. I will unpair and reset today and see if that makes a difference. I had also read that if paired in this fashion that the Bluetooth connection would simply be severed in creating the multiroom group, at least that's my recollection. Nevertheless, that didn't happen for me.

[Yorga]

2 things I noticed:

1) multi-room seems to time out, after leaving things for about 45 minutes yesterday I was back to one device playback by default.

2) this afternoon I get "Amazon Music is streaming on another device. Would you like to stream from this device instead" whenever I try to stream from multiple Echoes. There are 5 in the house being used throughout the day so this is a big problem at the moment.

Not sure if this is coincidence or a glitch, I've deleted multi-room group to no avail.

[Yorga]

Well if this response from Alexa support is to be taken at face value then I have 5 very expensive paper-weights in my house:

"Please allow me to explain this to you.

On Echo devices, you'll be able to play music only on one device at a time and after reviewing all the feedbacks given by our customers a new feature has been updated so that customers can access music on multiple devices which is the "Multi-Room" feature."

I've bough Echoes for both children, my office, kitchen, living room and (probably going to cause the most grief) my mother-in-law, everyone could listen to what they wanted at the same time. Whether this has been broken because of multi-room audio or whether they saw it as a loop-hole to close I don't know but last thing I need is each kid over-ruling the other's Echo whilst my MIL is trying to get her songs playing in a different house.

[TheWaltonMystic]

Has anyone worked out to switch this on and off? I've set it up on an Echo and two dots and it works like a charm. If I ask to play an album "Downstairs" away it goes. If I then ask to play an album (without specifying anything) it continues to play "Downstairs". If I try asking for an album on "Office Dot" it plays only on that but then asking to play an album without specifying reverts to "Downstairs".

This is the sort of thing I'd like to use once in a blue moon, I appreciate the option but I'd like it to be something that has to be specified and not the default.

Anyone had any luck?

I wondered this too and reported it via the Alexa App. It would appear that you have to explicitly stop the multi-room aspect and then request "Play <Station> on <Device Name>". Hardly ideal, however as someone else noted the "network playback" appears to time out after a while.