Amazon Multi-Room Music Syncs Songs on Multiple Echo Speakers

The estimated reading time for this post is 4 minutes

If you want to hear music throughout your house, you’ll probably be pleased with the latest update to Amazon’s Echo devices: Multi-Room Music. With this update, Echo devices can sync together to play a song in different rooms in your home.

Amazon updated the Echo last week to add Multi-Room Music. If you have more than one Echo device in your house, you can have them all playing the same song at the same time, creating a whole-house music system.

Now you can move throughout your home, listening to the same tune in sync through your Echo speakers. You can have a whole-house music system for the cost of a few Echo speakers.

Multi-Room Music works with the original Echo, the Echo Dot and the Echo Show. You can use it to play music from Amazon Music, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Pandora. Support for Spotify and SiriusXM is promised to come soon to Multi-Room Music.

Multi-Room Music is available for Echo in US, UK, and Germany.

How to Set Up Multi-Room Music

To use Multi-Room Music, you must have more than one Echo device. You also need to set up a group so Echo knows where to play the music.

How to Set Up a Multi-Room Music Group

To set up a Multi-Room Music group, go to the Amazon Alexa app and tap Settings in the left menu.

Scroll down to Audio Groups and choose “Multi-Room Music.” Tap the Create Group button.

At the top of the next screen you can name your group. Choose a custom name or one of the suggested names.

[tip] Alexa seems to understand suggested names better than custom group names. I tried to use a custom group name “Pennsylvania” but Alexa kept thinking that I was saying “Pandora”. [/tip]

Check which Echo devices you would like to add to your group.

Then tap the Create Group button.

After a few moments, Alexa will create your group.

Using Multi-Room Music

After you have set up a group, you can command Alexa to play a song on the Echoes in the group. For example, if you called your group “Downstairs” you can say, “Alexa, play ______ Downstairs.”

Your Echo speakers should then start playing the song on all of the Echo devices in your Downstairs group. You can move from one Echo to the other and listen to the song playing in sync on the speakers.

You can command Alexa from any speaker in the group. For example, if you started playing Multi-Room Music by commanding Alexa from one Echo, you can pause or stop the music by commanding Alexa from a different speaker within the group.

What Multi-Room Music Cannot Do

As cool as Multi-Room Music is (and it is very cool), it does have some limitations. It cannot sync audio from Bluetooth-connected devices. If you want to connect your phone to Echo via Bluetooth, you can only use that connection to play sound on one device.

Multi-Room Music also doesn’t play Audible audiobooks or Flash News Briefings. I guess that’s why they called it “Multi-Room Music” instead of “Multi-Room Sound.”

You cannot use Multi-Room Music to play music from Apple Music, Google Music or any other music service not supported by it. You cannot fast forward or rewind songs while using Multi-Room Music.

Alexa seems to struggle a bit with understanding commands when you ask her to play in a group of Echos. Because you’re adding the name of your group to the end of the sentence, she sometimes doesn’t recognize that you’re saying the name of a group, instead of a song or artist.

Instead, a two-step approach may be best, such as telling Alexa what music you want in one command, then telling her to play it on the group of Echoes in a second command.

Again, using one of the suggested group names reduces the chance Alexa will be confused.

Testing Multi-Room Music

I set up a group and tested Multi-Room Music on two traditional Echo speakers and one Echo Show. To my untrained ear, the music was perfectly in sync as I went from room to room.

I also put two Echo speakers next to each other and they played perfectly in sync, without lag or echoing (no pun intended).

Your Thoughts

Do you like the idea of using Echo speakers to play a song throughout your house? Will you use this new skill for your Echo devices? What did you name your group?

Share your thoughts in the Comments section below!

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