bizmodeller

We often get emails asking for My Media to support Multi-room Audio or to support syntax such as 'Alexa, ask My Media to play jazz music on my Downstairs Group'.

Unfortunately, we are limited by the APIs provided by Amazon. They provide an API to play music, however, there's no functionality in that API to choose a group or play anywhere other than the selected device.

We have raised a feature request to Amazon in several different ways. You can help by upvoting the idea here:

https://alexa.uservoice.com/forums/9068 ... api-stream

(we had another feature request in with Amazon which has mysteriously disappeared )

Basically - as soon as Amazon let us support it, we will support it!

I see that the Global Radio group in the UK has updated it's Alexa skill so that it now supports multi-room audio (and stereo pairs).

Does that mean the API has been updated to allow third-party skill writers to add multi-room support? Really hope so...

Andrew

I would be helpful to know what is going on at Amazon's end. The BBC blogged in October 2019 that they were trying to get multi-room enabled for their skill (them having switched away from Tunein) but of course what the BBC can get may differ from what a regular developer can get. But I don't think it is available yet on the BBC skill.

HOORAY!!!! My Echo Sub is now working!!!!

I think the Echo Sub uses multi-room, and it is now working for me.

majones wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 29, 2020 6:07 pm

I think the Echo Sub uses multi-room, and it is now working for me.

I think the Sub is treated as a stereo pair and stereo is now working - at least for some users - but not multi-room.

So a possible workaround - start playing ANYTHING else with multi-room. Then activate your MyMedia but DO NOT tell it to play on the multi-room group. For me, it continued playing on the group.

Base is an Echo Show 2nd gen (the 10 inch) with various other echos around the house.

Hope this helps!

@gabesvoice
You sir are a genius, I'm not sure how you found this but I can confirm this workaround does indeed work.
I asked my echo to play music on a group (in my case it was downstairs) which it did
Then I asked my media to play an artist I had but didn't specify the output echo and voila it came out of the downstairs group,
I was even skipping tracks and it still came out of all the speakers.
Great find

Wow, this works for me as well! You'll never know how grateful we are for you finding this. It's a feature invaluable to my partner who is blind. THANK YOU

Apart being a long-winded method I can say that this worked for me if I played music from Amazon Music on the everywhere group first but not if I was listening to a radio station from TuneIn on the everywhere group.

So I have to play music from Amazon Music on a group first and then MyMedia.

A stereo pair of Echo Plus devices in one room and a Dot in the kitchen.

Now, I have an Amazon Music subscription and Amazon Prime. The interesting thing would be to know whether this workaround would work for someone without either of the Amazon subscriptions. ie is an Amazon Prime or Music subscription necessary to get this workaround going?

Interested to know what set-ups others have...

I only have Amazon prime not a music subscription per se.
I hope this helps
I have found it to be fairly easy
Edit,
This also works with Plex so maybe something changed via an Amazon update.
Is it something that can be exploited/expanded by MyMedia?

Received an Email from Bizmodeller today detailing their suggested method of achieving multi-room audio. They said...

Without question, our most commonly asked question is:

"Does My Media for Alexa support multi-room audio".

Our standard response has been that unfortunately due to restrictions in the APIs that Amazon provides, third party skills including My Media have not been able to support Multi-room Audio mode.

That is until now - we've discovered a simple method that lets My Media users leverage Alexa Multi-room Audio and want to share it with you.

A somewhat convoluted method is suggested and detailed on the MyMedia website

Progress little by little... But just in time for reviewing my Amazon Music subscription.

agsteele wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 21, 2020 8:35 am

Received an Email from Bizmodeller today detailing their suggested method of achieving multi-room audio. They said...

Without question, our most commonly asked question is:

"Does My Media for Alexa support multi-room audio".

Our standard response has been that unfortunately due to restrictions in the APIs that Amazon provides, third party skills including My Media have not been able to support Multi-room Audio mode.

That is until now - we've discovered a simple method that lets My Media users leverage Alexa Multi-room Audio and want to share it with you.

A somewhat convoluted method is suggested and detailed on the MyMedia website

Progress little by little... But just in time for reviewing my Amazon Music subscription.

It seems this workaround for multiroom music playback no longer works. Amazon seems to have changed the settings a week or so ago and now it seems it is not possible to play music from skills on preferred speaker groups any longer.

richaardvark wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 08, 2020 8:27 am

It seems this workaround for multiroom music playback no longer works. Amazon seems to have changed the settings a week or so ago and now it seems it is not possible to play music from skills on preferred speaker groups any longer.

Er, well it still works for me. I ask Alexa to play anything on the 'everywhere' group, then while it's playing ask my media to play something.