Family plan with Alexa, can't play on multi devices despite multi accounts and separate setup

[wobbit]

Plan

Premium - Family

Country

UK

Device

3x Amazon Dots

My Question or Issue

We have 3 separate Alexa Dots in our house. Each is setup with their own Amazon accounts (myself, child 1 and child 2). Each Dot is linked to Spotify with separate accounts (myself, child 1 and child 2).

When a Dot is playing music, if another Dot in the house is asked to play music, the Dot currently playing music will stop.

The only connection between the Dots is the same WiFi and the family plan on Spotify.

Has anyone had a similar issue? If so, how did you fix it!?

[Petya]

Hey @wobbit,

Welcome to the Community!

We can confirm that if you're interested in using multiple Alexa speakers to stream different music at the same time, you'll need to not only have separate Spotify accounts, but also separate Amazon accounts. Each one of you will need to set his Echo up with an own Amazon ID, otherwise they will all sync to the same Spotify account. You can read more about this in the Good to know section of this article. 

Hope this info is useful. Give us a shout if you need help with anything else. We're happy to lend a hand 🙂

[wobbit]

Unfortunately that's not an acceptable solution, especially for 2 of the echo's being for music devices for relatively young children. You can't easily setup calling in a household between the devices, as you'd need separate mobile numbers linked to each Echo.

I've had to cancel my Spotify family membership and switch to Amazon Music Unlimited as that allows 6 concurrent devices per account.

As soon as Spotify sort this out I'd gladly switch back but at the moment it's a deal breaker for my household.

[Peter]

Hey @wobbit,

We respect your decision and appreciate your honest feedback 🙂

While it's currently not possible to set up separate Alexa voice profiles for each individual Spotify account, you can always submit a new idea for this in the Idea Exchange.

I had a look-around to see if someone had already suggested it, but since there isn't one, you can go ahead and create a new one yourself.

Make sure to check out this Spotify Answer for a quick guide on how to do this.

If you have any other questions, let us know.

Take care for now!

[dipsandjane]

Hi - did you solve this issue? 

In addition I've worked out spotify can't be played, on two separate devices (phones for example) at the same time let alone Alexas. Terrible. 

V annoyed as my teenagers constantly have to ask the other to turn theirs off, argument ensues etc etc

Come on spotify - please resolve. There must be thousands like us. 

[Mister_A]

This problem has existed for a long time and I have seen it suggested on other posts. Spotify seem to be dragging their heels on this.

I also had to move over to Amazon Family music to make it work. And I would also move back if Spotify did something about it.

You only need to look at the Amazon forums to know it is a issue for many other people. Come on Spotify provide a easy solution, you might gain some paying customers.

[Mihail]

Hey @Mister_A,

Thanks for reaching out and sharing your thoughts with the Community.

It seems that other users have went ahead and created this idea, requesting the ability to link multiple Spotify accounts to an Amazon account. However it's implementation doesn't depend solely on Spotify, but also on the cooperation of Amazon. That's why we can't give a timeframe for it's implementation. The best thing to do is to leave your +VOTE and subscribe to it, if you haven't already. We'll inform on any new developments there, as soon as there are any.

@dipsandjane note that one account can't be used on two devices at the same time.If your teens have separate Spotify accounts, it's possible that they are logged in to the same one. They should log off and back in with their own login details to fix this.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

[yukikaze1448]

Surely a better idea would be to allow Spotify to stream to concurrent devices equal to the amount of accounts in your family group?

[Mister_A]

Thanks for the reply. I doubt Spotify will get any cooperation from Amazon??

The solution is pretty simple and I am sure Spotify could implement if they wanted to.

Simply allow a spotify account to login to more than one device. It could be limited to a max of 6 devices/login instances within the family plan. 

It won't need any input from Amazon and you are likely to get Amazon Music customers migrating to Spotify - instead the current situation where Spotify customers with Amazon devices are migrating to Amazon Music.

[Mister_A]

@Mihail

The link to the "Idea" is not relevant as it is not the problem we have experienced .

See the suggested solutions above.

Could somebody at Spotify look into this and please give it some serious considered thought.

[yukikaze1448]

Agreed @Mister_A. I'd switch back to Spotify in an instant if I could get the concurrent playback.

[Mihail]

Hey @yukikaze1448 and @Mister_A,

Thank for your feedback.

We recommend that you create an idea on our Board that allows for unused slots in a Premium Family subscription to be converted into the option to stream on that number of devices simultaneously. You can learn how to do this here.
 
The Idea Exchange is a great way for us to keep track of what changes our users are interested in and how popular a certain idea is. This page explains how exactly your feedback reaches Spotify.

Hope this is helpful but don't hesitate to let us know if you have any further questions!
 

[yukikaze1448]

@Mihail - There's already an open idea for concurrent playback https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Amazon-Echo-Play-multiple-Speakers-at-the-same-Time/idi-...

Created 4 years ago!!!

[Mister_A]

@Mihail

You only need to search this forum to  and will see it is a problem that has been reported previously and is also ready on the ideas list.
 

If you search the Amazon Echo/Alexa forums many other people have also run into this problem.

I don't know who makes the decision to review idea but perhaps they could look at it again. Amazon have reported that they have sold more than 10 million Alexa devices ( https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/04/more-than-100-million-alexa-devices-have-been-sold/ ) . There might now be a financial incentive to review this feature/idea request. Perhaps as moderator you can escalate this?

[juhajonathan]

It does seem it’s a long requested feature, yet one that has not been addressed. I also had to leave Spotify due to the same reason. Here’s the latest attempt by the community. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Amazon-Alexa-Swap-Spotify-accounts-without-changing-Alex...

[juhajonathan]

I sporadically come to check if there has been any updates regarding this but nothing yet. I do miss Spotify but this is a dealbreaker. It’s not an issue with Google devices but it’s easier to switch to other music service than to other smart assistant platform. 

[Senormano]

I just upgraded to a family plan and have 3 accounts setup. While listening to my music on my phone while traveling, it stopped. Apparently because my family, at home, started a song on Alexa. 

THIS IS RIDICULOUS. YOU ARE TECHNOLOGY COMPANY TAKING $$$$ EVERY MONTH TO HALF DELIVER A SERVICE. 

This profit at the expense of the customer mindset has got to stop. The service is not being over used or over shared. I have “seats” available but no way to put them to work in a VERY BASIC use case.