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How to use Multi-Room Music with Amazon Alexa

Jon Bitner
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If you’ve built up a small army of Amazon Echo devices over the years, you should consider turning them into a surround system to fill your entire smart home with music. Amazon has given many of its devices the ability to sync their performance together with a feature known as Multi-Room Music, allowing you to quickly pump out tunes through every compatible device in your home. What’s even more impressive is how simple it is to use.

Here's how to use Multi-Room Music on your Amazon Echo devices, along with a few tips to customize and optimize its performance.

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Difficulty

Easy

Duration

10 minutes

What You Need

  • Amazon Alexa app

  • Amazon Echo devices (More than one is required)

The Amazon Echo Dot (5th Gen) with Clock.
Amazon

How to use Multi-Room Music with Amazon Echo devices

There are a few different ways to start using Multi-Room Music with your Amazon devices. The fastest is by saying, “Alexa, play music everywhere.” By default, Alexa will group everything in your home together and give it the group name “everywhere.” This means you won’t have to tinker with any menus or create any additional groups. As long as your devices are connected to the same network, they’ll start playing music with the above command.

If you’d like to make a custom group for Multi-Room Music, here’s how it works.

Step 1: Open your Alexa app.

Step 2: Select the Devices menu.

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Step 3: Select the plus button, then select Combine Speakers.

Step 4: Choose the Multi-Room Music option, then follow the rest of the on-screen prompts to finish your grouping.

Step 5: Now, instead of saying “Alexa, play music everywhere,” you can simply ask Alexa to play music for your new group.

Amazon Echo Studio.
Amazon

Common issues with Multi-Room Music

Having trouble with Multi-Room Music? The feature is designed to be simple and intuitive, but things don’t always go as expected.

A common issue encountered by users is attempting to use a service that’s not supported by the feature. Keep in mind not all music streaming services are compatible with Multi-Room Music – Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, SiriusXM, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and Audible are all guaranteed to work, while other services will be hit-or-miss.

You’ll also want to make sure all devices are connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Specifically, you might encounter issues if some are connected to the 5GHz version of your network while others are on the 2.4GHz network. Try connecting them all to the same Wi-Fi network before attempting to use the feature.

It’s also important to make sure you’re using Multi-Room Music with a compatible device. This includes both current and older generations of the Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Studio, and Echo Show lineup. If you’re still having issues, consider reaching out to the Amazon support team.

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Topics
Jon Bitner
Jon Bitner
Jon Bitner is a writer covering consumer electronics, technology, and gaming. His work has been published on various websites…
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