Amazon Echo, Getting Alexa to Serve Up Your Music
Amazon Echo is a very capable speaker. As I pointed out in the hardware section, it does have a nice three piece system. The sound is great and it gets loud enough to fill a room. Often we have to turn it down so we can speak easier. It has become one of my favorite devices as it has access to all of my music.
If you want to go Bluetooth, you can easily pair your smart phone or tablet to the
Echo, with one simple command. Alexa, pairing mode. Alexa will then respond instructing you to pair with the Echo in the Bluetooth menu of your device, and the blue ring on top will flash signifying pairing mode. Just like that your connected.
Now back to voice. That is what Echo is all about right? Once you setup the Echo you have access to all of your online music choices.
The Echo will be an integrated part of your Amazon account. I am an Amazon Prime member which allows me to access all of the prime music content on Amazon. How easy is it to access music? As the Echo, or perhaps its Alexa, learns what you like and request. Its as simple as saying, “Alexa Play“. She will then take a stab at playing a prime station you will enjoy.
Using voice commands with the Echo is very simple and pretty intuitive. Here are a few sample commands for playing music from Amazon Prime:
- Alexa, Play Zac Brown Band from Amazon prime , This command will cause Alexa to scour the cloud and play a shuffled mix of music from The Zac Brown Band that is in prime music.
- Alexa Play Chicken Fried, from Zac Brown band. This will cause Alexa to play specific song, in this command she will play Chicken Fried, from The Zac Brown Band. If the whole song is not available, Alexa will play a sample for you.
- Alexa, Volume 5. This will adjust the Echo volume to 5, you can adjust it anywhere between 1-10 on the fly. Although, the louder the music, the louder you have to say Alexa to get echo’s attention.
- Alexa, Next song. As you would think, this will cause Alexa to skip to the next song.
- Alexa, Pause. Alexa, Stop, Alexa Play are all valid commands to help you control your music.
When you request a song or band from Alexa, and you do not give her direction on where to find it. Alexa will first look in your purchased amazon music. Then if not found, Alexa will look to Amazon Music for the song or band. You can even ask for a station based on a band or genre of music. Or.. a feeling. Something Happy or Romantic.
- Alexa, Play Prime Top Country . This will cause Echo to play Primes top 50 country songs.
- Alexa, Play Prime Classic Rock . Alexa will serve up a shuffling of Prime Classic Rock
- Alexa, play love songs. Putting some faith in Alexa, she will choose some romantic tunes for you to enjoy.
The Alexa powered, Amazon Echo does a great job of serving up music from prime. I have even asked Alexa to play some nice dinner music. Yes, without missing a beat, the command is sent to the cloud. Then the music is delivered. Time to enjoy your meal with a some nice background music.
Well, it should be of no surprise that Amazon has their own services fully operational. They do a good job of bring all of their solutions together. We will address Fire TV in another section.
So, How does the Amazon Echo fair with other services? We all enjoy Pandora, iHeartRadio and Spotify among others. Like a Boss! That’s how! You will be pleasantly surprised that you can easily add your favorite services to your Amazon Echo music line up. Then Alexa will serve them up at your request.
I was easily able to connect my Pandora account with a couple clicks. In the Music section you simply select the Link account on Pandora link. You can see some examples in the picture to the left.
The simple steps are listed below:
- Select Link account on Pandora.com
- Login to your Pandora account on the next page.
- Congratulations, your Pandora account is now linked.
Now that your Pandora account is linked you have choices! The Alexa app does give you the option to choose a default music service. Perhaps you are not a Amazon Prime member. Perhaps you only want to use iHeartRadio. Here you can make that selection. Me, I like options. When I want to listen to Pandora, its as easy as saying, Alexa, Play One Republic station on Pandora. Or just ask her to create a station for you.
