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Hi there!

 

  I see there are a lot of related topics in the forums, but most are from a few years ago so I’m hoping that there’s an update or two that I can take advantage of.  Here’s the set-up I have in my house:

  • 3 Sonos Ones + 1 Sonos Roam in 4 different rooms upstairs
  • 2 Sonos Amps controlling 2 different rooms downstairs (1 amp controls 2 in-wall speakers, and the 2nd amp controls 4 in-wall speakers + 1 sonos sub)
    • Each of these 2 different rooms has one Amazon Echo Dot device used to control these speakers
  • 1 Sonos Connect controlling a 3rd room downstairs (not set-up yet, but will be soon)
    • One amazon echo device in this 3rd room as well
  • I have a Spotify family account with 4 accounts - 1 each for me, my husband, and my 2 kids.

  I’d like to be able to:

  1. Play a single stream of spotify music throughout the house and/or throughout multiple rooms (this can theoretically be done by grouping rooms together via the sonos amp and/or by grouping rooms together via the alexa app) - this works pretty seamlessly in my experience whether using the Sonos app or using the Alexas
  2. Play different streams of spotify in different rooms.  I might, for example, want to play 1 song on my daughter’s Sonos One upstairs, a different song on 1 sonos amp downstairs, and a 3rd song via my sonos connect downstairs.  This is where I run into lots of issues.

  With the 2nd use case above, I run into complete unpredictability in my devices.  When I try to use the alexa devices - say the sonos one for this example - to play spotify when I’m playing spotify on another device, I get anything from:

  • It stops the music elsewhere to play music on this sonos one
  • It says “now playing...” and then doesn’t play
  • It starts music in another room (occasionally in my sleeping baby’s room - you can imagine how I feel about that).
  • It says the device is not connected to the internet (which it clearly is because it’s literally the one talking to me)

  I’ve added all 4 of our Spotify accounts to the Sonos app and when I use the Sonos app to play music (for the 1st or 2nd use case above), it works seamlessly.  The problem is I’d like to be able to use Alexa for the 2nd use case and I really just can’t right now.  I’ve also tried adding both my husband and my Spotify accounts to the Alexa app as separate accounts for our household, but even that seems very unpredictable in whether or not it will work…  

 

  Has anyone set-up multiple Spotify accounts across multiple Alexa devices and Sonos speakers successfully?  I feel like there must be a way to do this!

 

THANK YOU in advance for your help!  And feel free to direct me to other forums or call lines if you have an idea that you think might be elsewhere!

Hi @tuls424 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Using the Sonos app, you shouldn’t run into any problems with doing as you describe, as long as you utilise the multiple Spotify accounts.

However, Alexa can only have one Spotify account added to it (on Sonos devices, at least - I was not aware that you could add multiple Spotify accounts to an Echo), and when you use voice commands, Alexa will always utilise that particular account. Add to this the fact that Spotify will restrict you from playing multiple streams from one account, and you get the problems you describe. Sonos users of Spotify get special treatment and are given 1 extra stream when the Sonos app is used, but this benefit does not get passed over to Alexa-initiated streams, even when they are on Sonos devices.

One way I can think of for you to possibly achieve what you describe would be to have the Echo Dots each log into a different Alexa account, and for each of these to be using a different Spotify account. I’m only guessing this would work, however, and I assume it would break other Alexa functionality.

Another option would be to use a different service in some rooms, like Amazon Music, by adding “from Amazon Music” to the end of your verbal command.

In addition, you may see some improvement after rebooting your router by switching it off for 30 seconds - but only in behaviour, not capability.

Hopefully, someone in the community will have figured out a way of doing this and will share!

Just jumping on this… This is super helpful - thank you! - but also so disappointing!

Is there any prospect of Spotify/Alexa sorting this out?  Would the problem be resolved if I used Amazon Music instead of Spotify? I don’t have any Echo or other Alexa-compatible devices. I only have the Sonos.

Thanks!

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