Amazon Echo Devices Gain Multi-Room Audio Functionality

Should you happen to own multiple Amazon Echo products (Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Show), you can now sync streams of music to all or some of them at the same time, thanks to the introduction of multi-room audio. That means playing the same tunes in your kitchen and bedroom or throughout your entire house with a simple voice command.

To get started, you’ll need to have the Amazon Alexa app on your phone and be signed-in to it. From within the Alexa app, head into Settings and scroll until you find the “Audio Groups” section. Tap through that to create a new group of Echo devices that you’ll want to stream to simultaneously. And be sure to name the group something easy to remember (like “upstairs”), since you’ll use the group name to initiate a streaming session.

Now that your group is setup, all you have to say is, “Alexa, play Gangstarr on upstairs,” and all group Echo members will fire up your favorite Gangstarr tracks.

For now, multi-room playback works with Amazon Music, Tunein, iHeartRadio, and Pandora. Amazon says that Spotify and SiriusXM support is “coming soon.”

On a related note, Amazon announced that it has released new tools to help developers bring multi-room music controls to their own speakers. That likely means that we’ll not only see new offerings from companies like Sonos, but smaller, more-affordable outfits too. Either way, Alexa music controls are expanding and you may not need an Echo to take advantage for long.

// Amazon