Streaming different music to different rooms

Brok · 14 Apr 2020 at 10:26

Hi folks,

I'm looking for some help solving what I thought must be a pretty standard use-case, but seems to be significantly more complicated than it should be.

I currently have 2 Sonos Ones with alexa control and a premium family Spotify account. I want to add to this setup 2 additional devices to put in my kid's rooms so that they can also request and play music via Alexa.

I want all 4 rooms to be able to request (via voice control) and play different music at the same time from the same streaming source. I had naively assumed that this would be possible with a combination of Amazon Household groups and Spotify family subscription.

I would like to retain Spotify as my music service if possible, but am willing to consider alternatives if another provider will work.

I had initially thought to get Echo devices (dots to start with) for my kids but if extending the Sonos eco-system is the only way of achieving this I would consider that as well.

Any help appreciated, thanks!

hornetstinger · 14 Apr 2020 at 12:40

I can play different music tracks stored on the Nas , on each of the three squeezeboxes (or sync them) don't use internet radio so haven't tried that.

lucid · 14 Apr 2020 at 14:00

I'm not sure I understand the OP's problem. What's the issue playing (say) four streams off Premium Spotify unless the account specifically prohibits it?

The usual problem is "how do I make one tune play on all, and in sync?" rather than let's use four devices separately. What am I missing here?

chroniclard · 14 Apr 2020 at 14:09

I think you need to have separate Amazon accounts on each Echo device then each Amazon account would have a different member of the family assigned to the Spotify.

Brok · 15 Apr 2020 at 08:58

lucid said:
I'm not sure I understand the OP's problem. What's the issue playing (say) four streams off Premium Spotify unless the account specifically prohibits it?

The usual problem is "how do I make one tune play on all, and in sync?" rather than let's use four devices separately. What am I missing here?

The issue is that when you request to start playing music in room 2 ("Alexa, play music in the playroom") the music in room 1 will stop. I presume this is a limitation of the fact you can only have a single Spotify account linked to the Alexa automation, and Spotify only allows a single active stream per account. Even though the subscription I pay for has multiple accounts linked, one for each family member.

I don't really want to go the route of having seperate Amazon accounts for each family member as I believe we would then lose the benefit of having the devices belong to the same home group (to use announcements for example). Also I'm pretty sure my kids are too young to have their own Amazon accounts anyway.

I'm just surprised this isn't a case that has already been solved as it must be quite common for households to want to stream different music in different rooms whilst retaining the benefits of automation across the group. I guess this might work with Amazon's music subscription service but I suspect that would only be the case if all the devices were Amazon as opposed to the 2 Sonos I already have.

chroniclard · 15 Apr 2020 at 09:03

Just looked at mine and cant seem to add more than one Spotify login, so I would guess its Amazon end, surely I should be able to to add the multiple logins of the family to different devices.