Alexa, Play Some Music: All the Alexa Music Commands

135 thoughts on “Alexa, Play Some Music: All the Alexa Music Commands”

1. Apologies if I glazed over these 2 tips I stumbled upon when chatting with my Echo Dots 😂
   1) You can seek to a particular time in a song by asking: Alexa, fast forward 30 seconds (or and time increment) etc.
   2) Volume doesn’t have to be just 1 through 10. You can find a “sweet” spot by asking for a volume percentage. (Alexa, volume 22%)
   *If you do not say “percent” after the number 0-100, then Alexa will remind you that the volume only comes 1 through 10 (I swear she knows what I was trying to do! Sometimes I think she likes to be difficult back to me 🤣)

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2. Hi, hope things are well with you. It’s been a while since there were new entries here, and I guess the biggest thing that’s happened to Amazon Music is the major change to Amazon Music Prime in Oct/Nov ‘22 when its catalogue expanded from 2m to 100m tracks, but with unpopular significant restrictions around playback in that you can no longer request specific items (with the exception of “all-access playlists) without “similar” music being added to your request i.e. it all works like artist radio/stations. Plus there are limitations on the number of skips, automatic stopping after a period of inactivity, no offline listening etc. To say this has not gone down well with Prime subscribers is rather an understatement.
   See here and related links https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GKL9M88FFWYHY7T9

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3. HI i have looked everywhere to find a pair of headphones that have built in the factuality to have Alexa app stored on them so you ask for any of the playlist of mine that are on Alexa independent and away from any other device ie phone, speaker just over a WIFI connection. IE for example I am in the gym and just ask the head phones only. Do these exists . See loads with Alexa wireless to allow me to access the app if it is paired to my phone but do not what to have my phone with me all the time hope I have made the request clear.

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4. I agree, Amazon music and Alexa need to modernize this. I have submitted feature requests to Amazon developers to do things such as:

   1) Change the play list order from newest added or from A to Z, Z to A, etc. (you can do this in the amazon music app by going into a playlist and then clicking on the “filter” button)
   Amazon could improve this filter function by making the setting stick rather than revert back to a default each time.
   2) Jump to song # in a playlist and jump backwards/forwards by X number of songs or jump to song number X in a playlist.
   3) Other things like find/replace a song that has changed and been removed for artwork/cover change is time consuming and tedious, and they need to add this command as Amazon and the artists break your playlists over time.
   4) Another feature they broke or removed along the way was to continue on in a specific playlist and at a specific song. Every time my phone locks, the app takes me back to the main screen and not to the last song I was playing! Very irritating.
   Lately I’ve turned on the car mode feature and use Alexa to voice control my songs, volume but the car mode settings has a feature that prevents the phone screen from locking. Thus, while I drive at least the app doesn’t terminate or lock up.
   As far as kids interrupting my playlist with their own requests, I’ve found duct tape works great on their mouths (just kidding).

   One thing that does work is to tell Alexa to play a specific playlist and then tell Alexa to shuffle songs in the playlist, and then tell Alexa to go to the next song. If you are lucky, it jumps to a song way down in the list and then you tell Alexa to turn off the shuffle mode.

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5. JFYI: Looks like Amazon will end their 3 month Amazon Music Unlimited FREE trial tomorrow. 🤷

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6. Reminder: if you do substitute the yellow square for the orange square, you’ll want to update “As we’ve failed to verify, we’re leaving this feature on orange.”

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7. Some more commands I have discovered:

   “Alexa, rewind [time interval]”
   “Alexa, fast-forward [time interval]”

   “Alexa, stop in [time interval]” — this is better than “Alexa, play for [time interval]” because Alexa will occasionally misinterpret the word “play”, exit the current song/album/playlist and start playing something else (usually “My Music”) instead. The “Stop in” command is foolproof.
   _____

   By the way, my screen shows your Unicode Orange Square almost identically to Red Square. Would you consider replacing all 🟧 U+1F7E7 with 🟨 U+1F7E8? Much better readability and scannability. (It also mirrors the intuitive traffic-light colour scheme.)

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8. Essential feature request. After starting to play music or playlists, someone “always” requests another song to be played. And you don’t want to kill the playlist and start over. Alexa, insert to now playing. Where can we request this enhancement and check status? Who doesn’t get song requests? No one. All my “apps” allow this. So I have to not use Alexa to play music when there is company.

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9. I have created a music list and I thought I could add a song that Alexa just played to my list. She doesn’t understand and just asked me to tell her which song I want to add and I may or may not know the title so….? Is there a command for her to add a song playing or just played to my list?

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   • Yes, you can add the song currently playing to a playlist with: “Alexa, add this song to my playlist [playlist name]“. Alexa will confirm with: “Adding the song [title] to your [playlist name] playlist”. Hope it works for you!

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     • ok…Thanks, does that apply to all music services? For some reason it wasn’t working last evening.

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       • It works only with Amazon Music, for e.g. Spotify Alexa replies: “That command is not supported.”

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10. Update, added:
    – that the Adaptive Volume feature is currently US only.
    – that Pandora, iHeartRadio, SiriusXM, and Tidal are not available in the U.K.
    – that the ability to move music is available for all services
    Thanks a lot Brantome for your feedback!
    – added the feature to play track numbers on records
    Thanks, David!

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    • Sorry, forgot =) I’ve also added the 6 months free of Amazon Music Unlimited Black Friday bundles with select Amazon Echo devices.
      Thanks & Cheers!

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11. Hi, hope all’s going well with you. A brief note to say Adaptive Volume is not yet available in the UK, and I’m not sure if you identify Pandora and iHeartRadio as USA only services too – apologies if I’ve missed that.

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    • Also, the UK don’t have SiriusXM nor Tidal…

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      • Thanks, Brantome! I’m fine, and I hope all is well with you too. I will incorporate your valuable input in an update this weekend and send out an update note. Cheers!

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12. Hey folks, another BIG Update! Right on time for Alexa’s birthday we’ve added:
    – How to move music wherever we go (great feature, thanks a lot Brantome!)
    – 3D Audio now available for any headphones with Amazon Music Unlimited
    – How to let Alexa automatically adjust her Speaking Volume
    – last but not least, the Amazon Music Trials are now available for 3 FREE Months

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13. Hi, guess you’ll have seen this major Amazon Music feature release allowing you to move what’s playing between devices and groups? Up till now, Spotify was the only service to permit this by default because of Spotify Connect and only supporting one stream per account. This must be one of the most commonly asked for features…

    https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=23657445011

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    • Thanks a lot, Brantome! I saw this feature recently and completely forgot that it’s one of the most requested features. However, thanks to you, we now have a big update with this feature and more.
      Cheers!

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    • A small correction to my own post – the ability to move streams around is for all supported streaming services, not just Amazon Music – I may have been a little excited to see it could be used by Amazon Music as that’s what I personally use 🙂

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14. I’m an old fogey who still thinks in terms of disks and LPs. I can understand that Alexa won’t know what I mean if I ask it to play the second LP or album of the Beatles “White Album” or “The Beatles” album. I don’t know the exact orde of appearance or the exact name of all the tracks I have in my physical media collection. Is ther a way I can make Alexa start playing from what would be a specific track on the physical album equivalent?
    For exaple Play from track 6 of the album “Beatles For Sale”? I accept “side 2” is meaningless to Alexa, but if I want to play an “album” I don’t always want to play from track 1. There is a similar problem if an album originally came as a multi-CD set, as is frequent for classical music. How could I get Alexa to play volume 2 of a multi CD collection. I always seem to have to start on CD1 track 1. It seems that Alexa only knows Albums as a collection of tracks and can only address that collection of tracks by starting at the first track. Am I not understanding something?

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    • Wonderful question! We also often visualize our physical collection of LPs or CDs when streaming music. =) B sides and volumes Alexa does not understand (yet?). However, “Alexa, play track (number) from the album (album name)” does return the right track on Amazon Music. Alexa will confirm with “playing the album …, starting with track number …” or “Mr Moonlight” for your request =)

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15. Alexa often suggests music based on other things I’ve listened to, and often nails it for me. Is there a way I can find out what station/playlist/channel she’s chosen so that I can go back to it later?

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    • You can find your recently played playlists/stations/channels by tapping on the play button at the bottom of the Alexa app. We have not found a voice command to request this information yet. To track every song you’ve listened to, you could set up the IFTTT routine detailed in this post. Hope this helps!

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16. BIG UPDATE (at least for Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers): We now get the HD content at no extra cost. There is also a time-limited (expires in 4 days) 3-month trial for those who have not tried Amazon Music Unlimited yet. I’ve also added Brantome’s findings and tried to get rid of too many typos. =)

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17. Unless I’ve missed it above, requests of the form “Alexa, play xyz for 2 minutes” now appear to be supported, so could be used instead of a separate sleep timer command. Alexa responds that it’ll play for x minutes or until the end of the track (for shorter times I suspect).

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    • Wonderful feature, thank you very much! I have added it to the playback control and sleep timer chapters. Cheers!

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18. Is there some way of getting alexa to correctly deal with classical music? If you ask for a particular multi moment piece (a concerto eg) she generally only plays the first movement, and if you try asking for the second often does nothing or plays the first again. I accept that she’s doing basic steering searches but she needs some extra smarts added, it seems to me. Thanks for any help.

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    • You could try adding “… album …” to your request. This usually helps playing the full composition instead of a single movement.
      Please let us know if this helps, so we can update this post for classical lovers. ☺️

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19. i have been purchasing songs from amazon for a number of years. is it possible to add to alexa the subtask to play songs from my amazon music library per a certain year. like all songs purchased in 2018, etc

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20. Say my wife ask Alexa to play a song. During that song I think of one I would like her to hear after the one she is currently playing. I have a short memory, is there a command to have Alexa play a particular song after the current one is playing? Any attempt i have tried has failed miserably. Either Alexa starts the song immediately or plays a song that resembles the command i tried.

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21. Hi I want to add White Christmas by the Drfiters to my holiday playlist but Alexa just keeps telling me I already have White Christmas (by Bing Crosby). How can I add another version? I’ve tried saying white Christmas by the Drifters. Thank you and great article.

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    • I find it easiest to go to the Amazon webpage on my laptop (they limit you on a phone or tablet if you have too many songs) and type in Amazon Music, then choose Prime Music (or unlimited if you have it), Search for an artist, then go to Songs (or Albums), and See All. Once you’re there, you can start adding! Pause your cursor near the song title and a + and … will appear. Clicking the + adds that song to My Music, but I don’t know what that is. Clicking on the … lets you click on Add to Playlist, which shows all your playlists, just click on the list to add it!!

      This works so much better than any other way I’ve found. Adding songs from an Echo device doesn’t always work, as you well know. Don’t know why they make it so difficult. Or why many artists have lots of duplicates of songs when you search this way. Or why we can’t sort any of our lists.

      Great song, hope this helps!! 🙂

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22. I used to be able to just say “Alexa, play L.A. Woman” and it would immediatly play L.A. Woman. Nowadays, it brings up a list of videos with the word woman in the title. Alexa is getting dumber.

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23. I am desperate to find the playlist I was listening to a few weeks ago. It has the songs, Whereever you May Go by the Calling and How you Remind Me by Nickelback. I would love to see a command that says, “Alexa, what playlists contain xxxxxx song?: Please; this is so frustrating.

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    • Agree, that would be a cool feature! But most “playlists” or “stations” are quite dynamic and personalized, so it might be difficult to recreate the exact same listening experience. Related playlists also don’t show up when we search for song titles in the Amazon music app / web app.
      You could try the commands from “How to play something we already heard?” like “Alexa, play the songs I heard 3 weeks ago.” You could also try to play one of the songs you remember and then “Alexa, play more songs like that”. Or, for full control – we just added this chapter today´ – you could track automatically every song you hear from Amazon Music on your Amazon Echos in Google Sheets and use this as inspiration to create your own playlists. Check out our new chapter: “How to track the songs we listen to in Google Sheets with IFTTT”. Hope this helps a bit!

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      • Thanks very much. May give that spreadsheet technique a try.

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24. Amazon Music supports now podcasts. Updated the feature jump table and podcast chapter.

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25. Hi folks,
    Big update on our Alexa Music Commands post!
    – Detailed the Music Services Descriptions and added Amazon HD, Apple Music and Spotify Free.
    – Added a chapter on how to link and set default music services
    – Replaced the outdated feature overview table picture with a new “Music Command Jump Table”. This table lets us jump directly from the Features/Services overview to the voice commands we’re interested in. Added Amazon Free, Spotify Free and Apple Music to the table and retested the voice commands per service.
    – The voice command chapters should now clearly indicate what does not work for which service (the color boxes).
    – Explained the “Current Savings” product boxes (and why they currently don’t work). Idea is to show you your daily Amazon savings on Amazon Echo devices (refreshes twice a day for U.S. and U.K. prices), so that you don’t miss a deal while you’re visiting smartenlight.
    – Updated Alexas Music Info commands (she learned quite a bit)
    – Added the “Follow Artist” feature
    – Added how to make Alexa speak faster/slower
    – Expanded the Podcast Support with new commands for Apple Music, Spotify and TuneIn and how to link and set the default podcast service
    – Updated the post date (since this is a bigger update)
    Hope you like this update, please keep your feedback coming!
    Thanks & Cheers,
    Kay

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26. Hi, the free ad supported Amazon Music service has also been available in the UK since last August, and probably other regios too by now. Furthermore free Spotify support was released in the USA, Australia and New Zealand last November, and in the past few days to more regions like Canada, UK, Ireland etc. See the Spotify skill description for what it offers, and this link https://newsroom.spotify.com/2019-11-20/spotify-free-users-you-can-now-stream-music-on-amazon-alexa-sonos-and-bose-speakers/
    Cheers

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    • Hi! Thank you very much! You inspired a bigger post update and will find many “Thank you, Brantome”‘s throughout the post. =) I’ve also added a link to your discussion on reddit regarding different music services and Alexa, as pro-tip under the new “Music Commands Jump Table”. Hope that’s fine, it might help many.
      Thanks & Cheers,
      Kay

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      • Great update, thanks 🙂

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27. This is one of the most helpful things I’ve ever read about my Echo Dot. Thanks! Two questions I hope someone out there can help with.

    1) I have an Echo connect which announces phone calls through the Dot. When I have music playing and the phone rings, the music mutes and pauses. When the phone call ends, I haven’t been able to find any command that resumes the playlist/song/radio station where it was.

    2. I have a TV soundbar plugged into a smart plug, I turn it on by saying “Alexa turn on soundbar.” I also have a Fire stick, and I watch programs by saying “Alexa watch [whatever].” I want to create a routine so that when I say to watch something the soundbar turns on. Haven’t been able to figure this out. I tried by telling Alexa if I say to watch something then turn the sound bar on. But then when I said e.g. “watch Homecoming” it didn’t work, she wants me to say “watch something.” If I say “watch something Homecoming,” depending on how long I pause after the word something, I either get the soundbar on but no Homecoming, or vice versa. Feel like there must be a way to always turn on the soundbar when I’m controlling the Fire stick.

    Any ideas appreciated! Thanks.

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28. I am building my playlists, but once I have added some of an artist’s songs to my playlist, then ask again for music by that artist, it always plays from my playlist, not Amazon Music. So I cannot add any more songs by that artist to my playlist. Same goes for a song I’ve added, but which might have versions by different artists. Is there a way to force it to play from Amazon Music, and not my playlists?

    This is an incredibly helpful list, thank you!!!

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    • Thank you, great question! Same here, Alexa prefers whats in our music library and this appears to be behavior by design. Briane and Dawn found the “Alexa, play [artist] station!” request. In our case this command fetches a fresh artist song on every request from Amazon Music and might be what you’re looking for? Pls let us know if it works, and we’ll update the post with your use-case! Thanks!

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      • Thank you so much for getting back to me, this works, and it plays more than that artist’s music! Don’t know if these ‘stations’ already exist, or it just creates them on request, but they’re great!

        I wish we could just add all music by an artist, with one command. Or even an entire album!

        Also, I had asked for it to play music by another artist, and got about 4 songs. So I asked it to play ‘other songs by’ that artist, and that gave me MANY more songs. It hasn’t worked since then, but it might work for others.

        Thanks again!

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29. I have noticed that occasionally there are two albums with the same name and yet a different list of songs. If I want to play a particular album of one of the two, What Alexa command do I use for the specific one I want to hear?

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    • If the album titles are identical in your music app (e.g. Amazon Music), and you want to listen to both, I think you’ll need to select the album with the app. But if you have a favorite album version, you could add this album to your music library and try “Alexa, play the album [album] from my library”.

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30. Added a link to our new post “Alexa’s Musical World Trip with 118 International Songs”, a non-stop flight from your couch to Germany, United Kingdom, India, Australia, Canada, Spain, Mexico, United States, Canada, France, Italy, Brazil and back to your couch. =)

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31. Added eight Alexa songs: five “drop some props” raps, Paper Airplanes, The Thank You Song and The Hand-Washing Song!

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32. Added link to the new Alexa Routines overview: How to Automate your Life with your Amazon Echo

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33. Thank you !!!!!

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34. Ask about Santa’s reindeer: “Alexa, who’s your favorite reindeer?” “Alexa, what can you tell me about Santa’s reindeer?” or “Alexa, what do you know about Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer?”

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35. Added 12 (!) Alexa Christmas Songs!

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36. I can’t remember what song “Model of a Digital Intelligence” is from
    Any chance- Anyone can tell me?
    Bill

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    • =) “Alexa, play I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General”

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37. I am new to Alexa and love her company. However my husband has tried every combintion of questions to tey and get Alexa tp play Led Zeppelins 1st album. Led Zeppelin. No matter how we word this , she just won’t play it. And yet she plays all their other albums. Please help.

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    • Great album! The command is pretty long: “Alexa play the album Led Zeppelin Deluxe Edition by Led Zeppelin”. You could create a playlist with a more convenient name, or you could create an Alexa Routine: When you say e.g. “play Led Zeppelin One” she should play “album Led Zeppelin Deluxe Edition by Led Zeppelin”. Hope this helps!

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38. How do I find a list of songs in one of my playlists. Also how do I delete songs from a particular playlist? Thanks.

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    • Alexa lets us create playlists and add songs with voice commands, but when trying to edit the playlist, she unfortunately still comes back with:”Sorry, for now I can’t edit playlists”. For these tasks it’s best to use the apps for now. To locate a song in a playlist you can open the Alexa app, tap on the currently playing song and then on the list icon at the bottom left. You can scroll your playlist and tap on the song you’d like to hear. To edit a playlist you can either visit “music.amazon.com” or use the Amazon Music app. Tap on “My Music” (bottom right) then “Playlists” (top left). Select your playlist, spot the song to remove and tap on the 3 dots next to it. Tap on “Remove from playlist”. Hope this helps! Thank you, we will update this post with these use cases!

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    • Alexa does not play the song I ask from Spotify
      Instead it is so dumb it plays the radio station which I don’t want
      Please resolve this echo 5 problem
      I have stopped talking to Alexa
      So mad

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      • Oh, sorry! We are not Amazon! Just a bunch of Echo users like you, who try to help each other. 3 ideas which might help:
        1. It seems you have not set your default music service to Spotify: In the Alexa app under Menu / Settings / Music & Podcasts tap on Default Services and set them to Spotify. If this is missing you most likely need to add “play … on Spotify” for every request. If you don’t do that, it defaults to Amazon Prime music stations.
        2. Just stumbled over this problem yesterday with the example “Space Oddity”: There are 10 versions of this song on Spotify and no way to distinguish them in a voice request. For this the only solution we can think of are playlists, where you add the version you like to hear manually in the Spotify app to a playlist and then request to play your playlist.
        3. For feedback to Amazon, there’s a chapter up there in the post. You should try e-mail, to make sure they follow up with your request.
        Hope this helps a bit!

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        • Some have said that if you manually select a song and add it to your library, that will cause it to be played over others as Alexa looks first there for your request. Might work for Spotify too.

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39. Our Alexa Alarm Post is online: https://www.smartenlight.com/alexa-alarm/

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40. Big Update! (updating the post date)
    – updated Alexa Volume (thanks, Cindy!)
    – added “How to let Alexa whisper”
    – updated looping commands (thanks, J Anne!)
    – updated Music Alarms (thanks, Kelly!) – Please note, there’s a dedicated Alexa Alarm post coming!
    – updated How to Create Your Own Music Commands
    – added Creating a Simple Alexa Routine with Voice
    – added Editing our Simple Alexa Routine in the Alexa App
    – added Creating an Alexa Routine from Scratch: Alexa, it’s Dinner Time!
    – added the Alexa song: Model of a Digital Intelligence

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41. How do I keep Alexa at a certain volume? I have to keep increasing or reducing the volume because she is not consistent. Thanks.

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    • With the volume commands “Alexa, volume up/down” or “Alexa, volume 1-10” we can control Alexa and the Media/music volume only together at the same time.
      1) If just Alexa’s voice volume is inconsistent and you have not changed the volume, you could try to power cycle the device (there were cases reported where this helped).
      2) If you find the media/music volume inconsistent relative to Alexa’s voice volume, it might be that the your preferred music source / flash briefings etc. are not normalized (have the same volume). For this we have no other solution currently, than to raise/lower the volume which also changes Alexas voice volume.
      3) If you find it’s inconsistent throughout the day, you can create scheduled Alexa Routines, to set the volume of your Echo devices to appropriate settings, eg louder throughout the day, softer in the evening/at night.
      You can do that by tapping on (Menu/Routines/+ at top right). Then tap on “When this happens”, select “Schedule”, then “At Time”, and specify time and repeat, e.g. everyday at 7 PM. Then tap on “Add Action” and select “Device Settings” and “Volume”, eg 20%. Choose the Echo where you’d like to change the volume and save the Routine. You can add multiple actions for multiple Echos and create different scheduled Routines.

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    • Hi Cindy, we just updated this post with your questions and you’re now part of it! =) Hope you will find it helpful and thanks a lot for your feedback!

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42. How do I get alexa to loop a playlist or nature sound continuously until I stop it or how to get it to loop for set number hours so I can use all night long to block outside noises. E.g. i have playlist of specific gregorian chants or sometime i just say bubbling g brook etc. Thanks

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    • Apart of the commands above “Alexa, loop (this album/this playlist)” and “Alexa, stop playing in 1 hour”, you can also try “Alexa, loop mode on” or “Alexa, loop MY (nameofyourplaylist) playlist”.
      You can also create an Alexa Routine (Menu/Routines/+ at top right). Then tap on “When this happens”, select “Voice” and enter your custom command, e.g. “good night music”. Then tap on “Add Action” and select “Music”. Here you can enter your playlist command “My (nameofyourplaylist) playlist” and set a timer for how long the music should play. Now, every time you say “Alexa, good night music” she’ll play your playlist for the duration you have specified.

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    • Hi J Anne, we just updated this post with your questions and you’re now part of it! =) There might be a couple of reasons that Alexa stops her playback (WiFi, Internet, firmware update, …). We’ve updated our Alexa Routines section, hope you like it. Let us know!

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43. This is so helpful. I am confused though by the Routines. I need specific examples on how to do one and what they are for. The article was a little vague on that. For example, how do you use the voice command to set the volume on a specific device? Also, my big issue is my alarm that I wake up to everyday to music, only plays the same type of genre, even though I never specified it. I asked Alexa “to wake me up to music every weekday at 6:00 AM.” When the alarm goes off, it only plays jazz music. Why does it only play this one type of music?

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    • Thanks a lot for the feedback! There’s already a dedicated “Alexa-Alarm” post in the making, where we’ll clarify all the important details around alarms (will link to it here, as soon as it’s ready!) The key-points in a nutshell: Be careful with routines instead of Regular/Music Alarms, as they won’t activate if your Echo loses WiFi/Internet connection. Music Alarms should be safe, as they get converted into regular alarms in case the device goes offline. If you only specify “wake me up to music”, the music alarm remembers the last genre/radio station they were set to (you can check the genre, but you cannot change the genre/station in the Alexa app, as music alarms are controlled voice only). To avoid super long commands you could say: “Alexa, wake me up to GENRE (on AmazonMusic/Spotify/…)” and she should come back with “Alarm for what time?”. You can then follow up with “Every weekday at 6:00 AM”. The volume for the music alarm can be set in the Alexa app / Reminders and Alarms / Alarms / Settings (at the bottom of the page). Make sure you first pick the right Echo device from the top selection! Ascending volume unfortunately only works for Regular Alarms currently. Much more to come in our Alexa Alarm post, still hope these hints are already helpful!

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    • Hi Kelly! We’ve updated the post with your feedback! The Alexa Alarm post is still not ready, so we’ve added the info here. The Alexa Routines section starts now super easy with voice commands and you can edit them from there. Hope you like it! Let us know …

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44. Very helpful. Answered all my questions.
    So far lol

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45. Added 3 Independence Day Alexa songs! =)

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46. I have been listening to the music from Hamilton on Alexa. I listened to all the songs in Act 1 and then paused.
    When I asked to resume later it started from the beginning.
    Is there a way to start an album from a particular song?

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    • Not sure, why the album played from the beginning. Pause/Resume/Continue appears to work here, even if it’s the next day. Unfortunately there are no commands to navigate to a specific song on an album, yet (other than starting the album and skipping many times). It would be great, if you could also request this feature through the app feedback. The quickest way to navigate within a longer album/playlist would be through the Alexa/Music app or the browser. Hope this helps!

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47. I have a pretty long playlist that spans two decades – 60’s & 70’s. I would love to ask Alexa to play the playlist in order of release date. Is there a way to do that? Currently I just shuffle the playlist but it always seems to play the same songs.

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    • We can currently only manually sort playlists in the Amazon Music app or website (by “drag and drop” on the three dots). “Alexa, turn on shuffle” or some other “shuffle command” from above should randomize your playback.

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48. “Alexa, add this song to my playlist (Note, this also works only for Amazon Music)”

    Unfortunately, that’s not true.

    Example: Alexa has some Nocturnes playing now.
    I ask her: “Alexa, what song is this?”

    Alexa: “Such and such from album such-and-such, performed by so-and-so.”

    Me: “Alexa, add this song to playlist “Nocturnes”.”

    Alexa: *Pauses song* “Sorry, it appears nothing is playing at the moment.” *Resumes song*

    I’ve found no way to make this function the way the documentation above implies that it’s intended to.

    Reply

    • Did you initially ask Alexa to play that music or did you manually select it from the Alexa or Amazon Music app? I’ve found in those latter cases (and it’s been that way for a while), that Alexa is unable to identify or add a track to a playlist if the audio wasn’t initiated by a verbal request.

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    • Just tested with ‘nocturnes’ (thanks for the tip!) from AMU (stations and playlists) and it works just fine adding them to personal playlists and the personal library following your steps. Maybe you have your Echos paired to speakers or linked as a stereo set? Though I cannot reproduce problems with single Echos, paired speakers, speaker groups or stereo sets, there are currently problems reported by some users that some commands do not work with such configurations (“sorry, it appears nothing is playing at the moment” – it’s like one Echo does not know, that the others are playing music). If the problem appears in your setup, it would be great if you could report the defect to Amazon (using the feedback form in the app as described in the post) to also help others who are struggling with this defect.

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      • You usually get the ‘sorry nothing is playing’ warning if the echo is playing from a third party skill, or as I say above, if you manually rather than verbally selected the music. It’s almost as if by ‘casting’ the music to your echo, Alexa isn’t aware of the content.

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        • Thank you! We were posting at the same time and I am happy that you took the much more probable angle. The problem with testing these problems is that my Echos hardly ever misbehave with music. So even with manual streaming to an Echo group Alexa just adds everything to the library. Will wait for your expertise before posting next time! =) Thanks a lot for all your feedback which is helping many people reading this post! We all owe you!

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49. All this and Alexa is still too stupid to not pick live versions of songs I want to hear?!? How about a simple switch that allows me to disable all live recording as a play option. Most of these songs have ‘live’ right in the title, should be pretty easy to do just based on song or album titles.

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    • Mike, great question, thank you! Just added a chapter on requesting the “right” version of a song. “Alexa, play the live/album version of [title] (by [artist])” might help in your case. If not, there’s a workaround with your library or playlists, which you can find in the chapter added. Hope this helps, appreciate if you let us know!

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      • Hi, as per this link, Alexa seems to search your “my music” first before it then searches your default streaming service, so I think it’s a slant on what you say above. I’d suggest playing the track, asking Alexa to add it to your library and after that, going by the link, it should select that in preference to variations on the track title.
        https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_left_v4_sib?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201601830

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        • Thank you! You are 100% correct! It was just that I tested too quickly and now after retesting, it seems to take a couple of seconds until Alexa realizes the preferred version is in the library. I’ve removed the “… from my library” and added a note for people expecting immediate results. Hope that’s clearer now!

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50. Update: We can now start an Alexa Routine when an Alarm is dismissed.
    Following new Alexa Routine features have been announced to arrive in the next weeks:
    – sunrise/sunset triggers
    – cam triggers routine
    – skills at the end of a routine
    – unread e-mail notification

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51. Added “Alexa, sing a song” with a list of songs and rap songs.

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52. Added the free ad-supported Amazon Music service (currently US only)

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53. Can I ask Alexa to play a certain playlist starting at song number 50? It always starts at the beginning. The only way I have found to skip that song is to say skip for each one.

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    • Unfortunately not with a voice command (yet). A manual workaround with the Alexa app would be to:
      1. start your playlist, 2. tap on the currently playing song in the Alexa app (bar at the bottom), 3. then tap on the playlist icon at the bottom left, 4. scroll down and tap on the song where you’d like to continue.
      If you’re just looking for a mix of songs, you could try “Alexa, shuffle my playlist”.

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      • Thank you, that worked!

        Another question, a little off-topic. Are there known problems with casting from within the Amazon music app? My Riva speaker worked well for the first few months with the Amazon app. Now, when selecting songs from the app (not Alexa), I get the endless blue circle as it tries to connect, even though the speaker is in the list and online. I also have a set of old bookshelf speakers connected via Chromecast audio. Same problem with Amazon. On the rare occasions when one will work, the other will work, too. I have a strong network signal and no problems with other devises. Sorry for the question in this forum but neither Riva nor Amazon can help me. Thanks.

        Reply

        • Happy to hear the workaround works!
          Sad to hear you are moving away from voice commands because of the missing feature of skipping multiple songs / playing a playlist from a specific position/song. We’ve submitted the feature request via the Alexa app / Help and Feedback / Send Feedback and hope more will do so (will add this now to the post as well!)
          For 3rd party speakers we currently have to rely on the community and I hope some of our many readers have a RIVA in their setup and can help specifically.
          For the Chromecast, this is a very interesting use case and there are no issues we can reproduce but we will keep an eye on it! There’s the generic troubleshooting tips which you might have tried already: 1. reboot your router (understand that your devices are visible and online but still this helps resetting the network connections), 2. reboot your Chromecast (unplug for a couple of seconds, it will search for an update after reboot), 3. force quit the Amazon Music app (open the settings app, locate Amazon Music, select force stop). 4. try again, and we hope this helps! =) Please let us know!

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    • This is the question I wanted to find an answer to. I’ve asked her to shuffle but she always shuffles the same way. I’ve been adding songs to my playlist for years and would like her to start the list in the middle, or an hour into it, or at a specific track so I can hear newly added songs first. Of course it’s an exercise in futility. If I wanted to open an app and play music from an app I wouldn’t need Alexa.

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54. Doesn’t Alexa also support Deezer? I use it with Alexa right now!

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    • Yes, and Apple Music as well! We’ll add those services and make the table interactive, so it’s more obvious which commands work for which service! Update planned around Easter, please hang in!

      Reply

55. How can I choose (which command) a particular artist through alexa (echo dot) pass on to my musiccast receiver (yamaha rx-v685)?

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    • Don’t think you can. The available commands are here

      Here they state: “Can I request a specific artist, album or song using Alexa?
      It is possible to set up Playlists and Favorites in the MusicCast app and recall those using Alexa voice commands. Also, it is currently possible to use an Echo/Dot as a source for a MusicCast product connected via Bluetooth (all MusicCast products support a Bluetooth input). When an Echo is used as a source, you can request a specific artist, album or song just as you would when using it as a standalone device. MusicCast lets you redistribute a Bluetooth stream to multiple MusicCast products for simultaneous playback if desired.”

      So looks like bluetooth is the best you can do if you don’t want to play MusicCast favorites and playlists.
      See as well the link here

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    • Yamaha has announced support for “specific artist, album or song from select streaming services” in 2019, through their MusicCast skill (vs MusicCast Smart Home skill). Once this is supported the command should be: “Alexa, ask MusicCast to play [artist/album/song] in the [room]”. Until then you’d need to create playlists/favorites in your MusicCast app and say “Alexa, ask MusicCast to play [favorite/playlist/recents] in the [room].”

      As Brantome found out (thank you!), pairing your Amazon Echo via bluetooth, would give you all the commands which Alexa understands standalone.

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56. How can I get Alexa to play straight through my like list, rather than through an increasingly small list based on what played last?

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    • For Amazon Music: Playing back what you “thumbed up” will not work. This feature is intended to tune Alexa’s suggestions, e.g. when you ask her to play some music without specifying what you’d like to hear. She should learn over time to make better suggestions.
      But you could create your own playlists and instead of “thumbs up”, add your favorite songs to your playlists. Or just add the songs you like to your library and ask for songs you like (Alexa will then play your library).

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57. Added the new feature “Song ID” for Amazon Music.

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58. Good list. A few updates perhaps:
    1. voice control of equaliser now available in U.K. too
    2. Create/add to playlist also works well
    3. You can add “shuffle” to a play action in a routine, plus you can also direct output to a group, not just a device by adding its name to the end of the play action text e.g. “good stuff playlist shuffle downstairs” will shuffle my “good stuff” playlist on my Downstairs group
    4. On the now playing screen in the Alexa app, you can select the volume icon and adjust the volume slider for each device in a group

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    • Thanks a lot for the brilliant feedback. Finally updated the post!
      Cheers,
      Kay

      Reply

59. This is a helpful article. Though I know/use most of the commands, I had no idea an equalizer had been added! Super cool. Skip to the end if you just want to read my question and not the novel that precedes it!

    I have a massive library of personally-owned songs — over 10,000 — and am a bit of a ‘super-user’ with over 100 playlists, mp3 tags with my own unique way of labeling genres and specifying the year of each song/album. I use playlists like mad and there was over a year that Alexa would not shuffle more than the first 500 songs in a playlist (playlists technically had a 500-song limit, though you could avoid that by using the website instead of the PC app). Whew, after numerous online threads, tweets, chats and calls and emails with Amazon, they finally got that fixed. It was a bizarre issue since randomizing lists is one of the easiest functions of technology. The coding is absurdly easy.

    Currently, the issue du jour (du ano, really) is that the Amazon Music app on my smartphone will not bring in all of my playlists, and the ones it does bring in are incomplete. Amazon is thoroughly stumped and fairly indifferent. Too bad for me.

    Oh, let’s not forget my other pet peeve, as of February 9 (expiration date of my Amazon Music Storage annual subscription), I will no longer be able to upload music to Amazon Music. WOW, taking us back to the 1970s. All these Alexas in my house (I have 7) and I can no longer add my own music to them, and Amazon has not provided another service that will accomplish it (and let’s face it, even a jailbroken workaround would be a horrendous black hole of wasted time since the new service would force me to re-establish all my playlists among other issues). SHEESH!!! I just wanna buy mp3s and play them on Alexa, and I no longer can add songs. No, I’ll never rent music through a paid streaming service.

    Anyhoo, I say all that to ask one more question that probably doesn’t have a good answer.

    QUESTION: While playing a playlist (or any other series of songs), is there a way to insert a song into that list to be played next?

    My Zune has been able to handle that since it was made back in 2007 or so, but I can’t find any command to queue up the next song in Alexa without having her immediately play it and cancel the playlist/series she was playing.

    Reply

    • If you buy your MP3s from Amazon (or autoripped CDs for that matter), they are available for playback by Alexa as they appear in your amazon Music library.

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60. hi as someone else who has a superlong playlist has anyone figured out how to make alexa skip forward 10, 15 or 20 songs or ideally resume at song instructed or resume at last played point? Surely this is a reasonable voice command?

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    • The exact question I was looking for an answer to. You asked 3 years ago and apparently they still don’t have that voice control command available.

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61. As with pretty much every other music service I’ve ever seen its vocabulary assumes I’m listening to modern rubbish. If I ask it to play a composed work it sometimes plays the first movement and then stops, and sometimes it picks a movement at random and plays that. So I said, “Alexa, play Beethoven, piano sonata in A op. 101”, and it played the finale. So I said the same thing again and this time it played the second movement and then stopped. How do I get it to play the work from the beginning of the first movement through to the end of the last movement without a break?

    Reply

    • Assuming it’s on one album, you could try: “Alexa, play the album …”. Since your commands could get pretty long, Alexa routines could help with shorter voice commands for your favorite music. Hope this helps! Cheers!

      Reply

62. Interesting and detailed collection of commands – nice work!

    I have some Sonos One speakers and they can do many things but I come across things Alexa on Sonos will not do. The play a song and then saying the lyrics does not work.
    Perhaps that because I’m using Spotify rather than Amazon music – I’m not sure? I like Spotify though because it has a great Scandinavian music catalogue.
    I’ve come across some problems with Skills – particularly the Swedish Radio skill that won’t play a particular local radio for me. Try “Play Swedish Radio” Then Play P4 Östergötland. Alexa will play pretty much any other local station but that one! It doesn’t matter how to pronounce it, In perfect Swedish, local dialect Swedish or English or America accents just can’t get it to work – all the others work!

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    • Thanks Steve! Alexa search by lyrics does not work with Spotify. However, lyrics search works with Google/Spotify, so I guess it’s not a technical restriction but Amazons commercial decision to reserve it for Amazon Music. Funny enough, without knowing Swedish at all, “P4 Östergötland” played straight away on a regular Echo. For me it works with German and English pronunciation. For English you can – for instance – type it in here: https://tophonetics.com, click on American English and hit play. In my case, Alexa understands the played back channel name. Hope this helps for finding the voice command which works for you!

      Reply

    • Not sure, why your last posts did not make it into the comments section (maybe you sent them via e-mail and the system could not pick them up …) I have 2 more ideas for you.
      The first one: You could create a custom routine. When you say eg “play my radio”, the action could be that Alexa “plays P4 Östergötland” from TuneIn. Custom routines including audio actions will not execute in the Alexa app or on Sonos (this seems to be currently restricted by Amazon), however you can specify in the routine that Alexa should respond from your Sonos. So you could trigger “play my radio” from the Alexa app or an Echo and it would play on your Sonos. Alexa might come back with “audio actions are not supported on this device” but would still play your station.
      The second one: Alexa skill availability is linked to the Kindle store you are linked to. US leads with Alexa features and skill availability. You can switch your Kindle account to amazon.com under (please try this on a desktop, as the mobile site looks a bit different and the link is well hidden): Your Account / Manage Your Content And Devices / Preferences / Country and Region Settings. There you should find “Click here to learn more about other Amazon sites you are eligible to shop on based on your country/region of residence”. Amazon.com should display and “Learn about transferring your Amazon digital account to Amazon.com”. If you follow this link you should see a button to transfer your Kindle account to Amazon.com. Please note, that this loads a new configuration into your Alexa’s, so you would need to recreate routines, link skills and re-add smart home devices. However you would access the newest Alexa features and skills with this configuration.
      Hope one of the ideas works for you!

      Reply

63. Let’s say I tell Alexa to play a song, then I tell it to play a new song. How do I tell Alexa to go back one song ago, or go back 5 songs ago? I tried everything, can’t get this to work, it just repeats the current song. I would think this functionality would be so basic!

    Reply

    • If there is only one song in the queue, Alexa will repeat this one song because there is no next/previous (you can check in the Alexa app when something is playing, tap on the song and and then the list icon bottom left) for Amazon Music or in the Spotify app, if that’s your service. If you request a playlist/album/station you can jump between the songs with “Alexa next/previous”. Also the more sophisticated commands like “play the songs I heard yesterday evening” should work now for Amazon Music. Hope this helps!

      Reply

64. My issue is similar to Kelly’s. I’ll be listening to my playlist, then one of my kids asks Alexa to play a specific song. I want Alexa to resume my playlist afterward, but it seems like I can only do that by starting over. I also wish it would resume automatically. Is there a different way for my kids to request their one song so that Alexa will resume my playlist afterward?

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    • You remind me that a whole chapter on multi user music is missing! Will definitely look into that. Currently the only way I can imagine is to mix 2 music services. For instance you have your playlist being played back on Spotify, your kids request their “song from Amazon Music” (included in Amazon Prime) and you “resume Spotify” to continue from where you left off. If you have a large enough playlist and don’t care where you were, the “shuffle playlist” (instead of “play playlist” should do the trick), on only one service.

      Reply

    • Spotify also has the unique feature of being able to resume playback on another device or group without restarting the track/ playlist.

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65. Whenever I ask Alexa to resume my playlist. It starts from the beginning, even when I say the name of it. When I try to resume from the Alexa app, the same thing happens. Also, when I skip to get where I left off, it won’t play the next song in line. I have almost 600 songs in my playlist and so there are plenty that haven’t gotten played yet. I have to remove songs that have been played and tell Alexa to shuffle all over again. It is so annoying. Is there anything else I could try?

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    • Seems like a huge bug on Alexa side. Some users indicate it applies only to the first song and try to add a silent song as first one in the playlist, on shuffle. Hope this helps?

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    • Hi Kelly! Another idea, since you have a long playlist, you could try to go directly on shuffle by “shuffle (your playlist) playlist” (instead of “play playlist” and then turning on shuffle) Works for me on Amazon Music and Spotify!

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      • A long playlist? My longest list is 10,000 songs. 🙂

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66. I had alexia playing what ever I wanted her to do . Had internet changed with new ip address . Rebooked her up now I cant get her to recognize anything. Any suggestions

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    • If non music related commands still work, you could check your music settings (Alexa preferences section) in the Alexa app. Hope this helps?

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67. I want to ask Alexa to play a certain artist, and then, I want to add additional artists to the playlist (without creating a playlist). E.g., ALexa, play music by John Prine. then… after a while, I say, Alexa add JJ Cale. When I do this, it says this feature is not yet available. 🙁 When will this be available?

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68. Update 2018-08-02: Added some new commands, the “station” feature from your feedback and the new EQ feature (initially US only). In case you’re revisiting this page, updates are in green.

    Cheers,
    Kay

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69. Best way to command her is to play an artist’s “station” which will play that artist and others from the same era and genre. There are thousands of stations. If I say play the Eagles station, it will play that “kind” of music. If I say play the 21 Pilots station, she will play a variety of that more modern alternative pop.

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    • Thanks Dawn! Your answer is much better than mine re Briane’s question. Will look into a upvoting feature for comments, so that it’s more obvious!

      Thanks & Cheers,
      Kay

      Reply

70. I’d be interested to know if you’ve found a way to have Alexa play/shuffle songs by two or more particular artists, rather than just one or however many “she thinks” are similar.

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    • Hi Briane!
      Sorry for my super-late response!
      The closest I found are “prime stations” as documented here (link)
      Another option is of course to create playlists in the app, add the artists you like, and trigger those via voice.
      Hope this helps!
      Cheers,
      Kay

      Reply

71. In case I have missed your favorite music command:
    Please let me know, and I’ll add it to the list!
    Thanks & Cheers,
    Kay

    Reply