Amazon announced today that it’s adding support for Spotify and SiriusXM to the multiroom audio feature on Echo devices, letting users synchronize music across multiple rooms. Amazon launched the multiroom audio feature earlier this year, supporting Amazon Music Unlimited, TuneIn, iHeartRadio and Pandora. But now, as Amazon promised back in August, Spotify (and SiriusXM, if that was a deal-breaker for you) will work with multiroom playback, too.
For now, Spotify is only available with multiroom audio on the Echo in the US, UK, Germany, Canada, and Ireland, while SiriusXM is only in the US. But if you’re looking to use Echos to build out your own ad-hoc Sonos-style system, the addition of Spotify support should go a long way toward making that a reality.
To set up multiroom audio, head to settings in the Alexa app. Scroll down until you find Audio Groups and select Multi-Room Music. The app will then prompt you to create a group, making it easier to control music playback by saying things like “Alexa play music upstairs” instead of calling out individual speakers. Once you create your groups, setup is complete.
Using multiroom audio is as simple as everything else with the Echo, just say where you want the music to play. Saying “Play Justin Timberlake” followed by the name of your group will activate the music in your desired location, and so far it’s worked flawlessly in my testing.
Now if you’re like me and you enjoy the ease of use that multiroom audio support provides — but would like to utilize it with better speakers, like Sonos for example — well you shouldn’t have to wait much longer. Amazon has also released a new API for developers that will allow companies like Sonos and Samsung to control their whole-home speaker systems with Alexa.
Sonos has been teasing this feature for nearly a year at this point, but now it looks like it won’t be the only company rolling out an integration with Amazon in the near future. Amazon is has released another API to allow third-party Alexa speakers to operate within the multiroom audio playback setup as well. At this rate, soon Alexa will be the main operator of all music in your home, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Multiroom audio playback is available to Echo owners in the US, UK, and Germany on Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Show devices.
Using multiroom audio is as simple as everything else with the Echo, just say where you want the music to play. Saying “Play Justin Timberlake” followed by the name of your group will activate the music in your desired location, and so far it’s worked flawlessly in my testing.
Now if you’re like me and you enjoy the ease of use that multiroom audio support provides — but would like to utilize it with better speakers, like Sonos for example — well you shouldn’t have to wait much longer. Amazon has also released a new API for developers that will allow companies like Sonos and Samsung to control their whole-home speaker systems with Alexa.
Sonos has been teasing this feature for nearly a year at this point, but now it looks like it won’t be the only company rolling out an integration with Amazon in the near future. Amazon is has released another API to allow third-party Alexa speakers to operate within the multiroom audio playback setup as well. At this rate, soon Alexa will be the main operator of all music in your home, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Multiroom audio playback is available to Echo owners in the US, UK, and Germany on Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Show devices.
No comments:
Post a Comment