Amazon Echo stops my Phone Playback

[Treffnix]

What is the correct way of using Spotify on Amazon Echo?

Ich connected my (premium) spotify account to my Echo, which works quite good as long as I'm at home. But everytime I'm on the road listening to Spotify via Android-App and bluetooth and my girlfriend starts spotify on my Echo at home, my phone stops playing. If I press play again, the echo stops playing the song, my girlfriend listened to on the echo. That's pretty annoying. Do I really need a third account just for my Echo. If I buy a second echo, will I need a fourth account? I really like spotify, but Amazon Music seems quite attractive at the moment.

[MattSuda]

Hey @Treffnix

Each Spotify account is meant for personal use by one person only. Each Spotify account can only play on one device at a time otherwise it will pause the playback on the others.

You will both need your own Spotify account.

I suggest checking out the family plan:

https://www.spotify.com/family

[Treffnix]

Hi MattSuda,

thank you for your answer. I understand that we both need a personal account and it works quite good that way as long as I play my music with my account on my devices and she plays her music with her account on her devices.

But the Amazon Echo other than smartphones and PCs etc. is ( by design? ) a shared device. It's linked to my Amazon-Account and to my Spotify account at the moment, but everybody in the house could use it. If I would link it to my girlfriends account, the problem would be the same the other way around. As far as I know there is no fast way to switch the spotify account on the echo. Even if I would book a third dedicated account for the Echo, I would run into new problems with multiple Echo-Devices in the house ( which is planned ), plus I would loose the possibilities to control playback from the app and my Playlists.

I can't be the only one using Echo with Spotify in a multi-person-household. There must be some kind of best practice. Netflix for example works great in a multi-shared-device-enviroment

[MattSuda]

Ah, I understand the problem better now. Thanks for clearing that up.

Unfortunately I don't think Spotify will work well for this scenario. Amazon should add a way to quickly switch Spotify accounts. 

There have been other posts from users such as this one:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Other-Partners-Windows-Phone-etc/Playing-Spotify-on-Multiple-Amazon...

The Spotify Family plan is $14.99 (this is the US price, varies depending on country) a month and you can have up to 6 accounts. While it was not designed for this, you could just create multiple accounts specifially for each echo and then the personal accounts would also be under the family plan. That way each echo can play without pausing the other and it wouldn't pause on your personal account. Doing this though would mean you can't control playback from the mobile app because of the different accounts that are signed in and you wouldn't have the same music library unless you followed your playlists from the new accounts.

[MattSuda]

Also according to this post you have to not only create a new Spotify account for each echo, but a new Amazon account?

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Other-Partners-Windows-Phone-etc/Playing-Spotify-on-Multiple-Amazon...

It might be that you can only link 1 Spotify account to your Amazon account.

[MattSuda]

Yeah, it looks like you can only connect 1 Spotify account to your Amazon account:

https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/4xre77/multiple_spotify_accounts/

And here on tip #16 it says you can add multiple Amazon accounts to the echo and switch between them, that way it will also switch the Spotify account:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/nicolenguyen/amazon-echo-tips-and-tricks?utm_term=.oqbdLMVpR#.plE47gGrz

So not really sure what to suggest. Seems like a really complicated thing to setup to get it working the way you want it to.

[Treffnix]

Hi again and thanks for your research,

you are right, the spotify account is linked to the amazon account, not the device in the alexa-app. Multiple Amazon accounts isn't really an option. As far as I know, multiple means a maximum of two, by the way. Two would be sufficient for me an my girlfriend, but the problem is, you have to double every other setting ( calendar, shopping-list, smarthome-connection etc. ). The second problem is, nobody ( especially my girlfriend ) would check which account is active, before playing music. As there is no voice recognition everybody would just start playing music on the currently active account, causing the same problems as mentioned before.

I thought my use-case was pretty common, but it looks like it's not even possible at the moment. I wished there was an upgrade option to increase the number of active devices per account ( like on netflix ) or at least priorize a specific device. Guess I'll have to take a look at Amazons Music-Unlimited options, which I really don't want on my Smartphone. 😞

Does anyone know if Google Home offers a better spotify-integration? It's not available in Germany yet, but if it just works, I would be willing to switch from Amazon to Google.

[MattSuda]

You're welcome

I found these threads about Google Home, not sure if they will help:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/googlehome/9gkyrwiNTxI

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/googlehome/zDmLHVqDPuI

I don't own an Amazon Echo or Google Home, but from what I've read, I think I would be just as frustrated. Your use case will probably be more common as more and more people use these devices, so hopefully Amazon, Google, and Spotify can sort this out. Spotify's accounts currently work differently than Netflix. Each account can only playback on one device at a time, with the option of having multiple accounts under a family plan. With Netflix, an account is designed to be a family account where you just add more simultaneous streams to the account plan.

[jasonhopewell]

Your use case is my use case too!  Only, I have the problem with SONOS one with the Alexa app and Spotify.  I am driving home listening to Spotify and the it stops because the kids have got home and ‘shuffle play Ed Sheeran’ has happened in the kitchen.

we have a family Spotify account, but the Alexa app on my iPhone points to the Spotify account I am using and do the kitchen sonos also points to it too.  My kids each have a Spotify separate account running on their iPhone / IPads.

There must be a better way!

[moistdef]

This is frustrating. 

I have a Spotify Premium for Family account with my family and girlfriend on it. 

My girlfriend has an Echo Dot. 

When I'm driving and listening to Spotify in my car, if my girlfriend decides to play music via Spotify on her Echo Dot, it stops the music in my car. If I resume the music in my car, it resumes with the music she was playing. 

I've tried signing out of everywhere, and factory resetting the Echo Dot. 

Beyond frustrating. 

[Treffnix]

Good to hear I'm not the only person, who has this problem.

Not so good for you, though.

I still don't have a solution. My workaround for now is giving Alexa an own account. Alexa is now a registered family member. m(

Because Alexa doesn't have a smartphone it's account doesn't have any playlists or app-integration. When I want to play specific music from my spotify-app on the Echo, I use the voice command "Alexa, Spotify Connect", which presents the Echo as a Spotify-target-device for a couple of minutes.

It's still a kludge

[Weltanschauung]

This is surely not beyond the wit of Amazon and Spotify to resolve?  I have a similar problem.  Multiple Echo devices at home, family accounts for all and I still lose music when a family member is in one if our shared rooms, such as the kitchen or lounge; and listening to Spotify. Please can Spotifzon or Amify sort this out for us all? We have sent humans into space after all. 

[Alvarock]

Same thing here. ¨Nice¨ to know I am not alone with this problem. I guess they are trying to control how many people use the account.

One solution might be let us play in the phone and in a shared device with the same account, like Amazon Echo or Google Home, in case we have a family plan with accounts available. Just configure in Spotify that we want to use one account in two devices and that would automatically remove one of the 6 accounts you have to share. Maybe they have already thought about this solution but having other problems, who knows.