Amazon Echo without Prime

Lifes_Grand_Plan

Hi folks,

I have Amazon Prime and recently got an Echo Dot which I love. The in-laws saw it and want one now but they don't have Prime. Is an Echo any good without Prime?

The main thing I think they'd use it for is Music but my understanding is that with Prime I get Amazon Music on my Dot but they wouldn't without Prime?

Any help or advice appreciated.

DCFC79

Lifes_Grand_Plan wrote: »

Hi folks,

I have Amazon Prime and recently got an Echo Dot which I love. The in-laws saw it and want one now but they don't have Prime. Is an Echo any good without Prime?

The main thing I think they'd use it for is Music but my understanding is that with Prime I get Amazon Music on my Dot but they wouldn't without Prime?

Any help or advice appreciated.

What did they like about it ?

Was it the whole " Alexa play music by ELO" ?

According to the interwbs you can upload your own music and use Echo to play music.

baza52

Can I play tracks I own on Alexa?
Short answer: You can only Bluetooth your own music from your phone, PC or tablet to your Echo device, with minimal Alexa playback control ("Play", "Pause", "Previous", "Next", "Stop", "Resume", "Restart"). You can’t directly ask Alexa for specific tracks or artists, for example.
Long answer: You can however play tracks from CDs marked Autorip and MP3s you previously bought from Amazon - they’re available to Alexa under “My Music/ My Library”.
Up until about a year ago, Amazon did offer a music upload service for users’ own tracks, but that has been ‘retired’, although those who subscribed to the paid version of that service should still be able to access their uploaded tracks if they selected the ‘keep my songs’ option under their upload music subscription details.

You can play music you own through a variety of means, the most common being these third party services/ Alexa skills:
a) iBroadcast (https://www.ibroadcast.com/home/) allows you to upload your full tracks to their cloud for playback with Alexa and other devices. Playback is currently limited to 128Kbps, but a higher bitrate Premium chargeable service is planned.
b) MyMedia (https://www.mymediaalexa.com/) allows you to use Alexa to play the tracks you have stored on your PC or local NAS device, including those in your iTunes library. It requires a small media service to be running locally on a PC, Mac, Raspberry PI or Linux. It uploads your library tags to its cloud to facilitate search and playback, the cost of which is recovered through annual membership costs which start at $5.
c) Plex (https://support.plex.tv/articles/115000320808-getting-started-with-alexa-voice-control/) operates in a similar manner to MyMedia, allowing Alexa access to your local Plex Media Server. See the Plex site for more details.
Please note that these third-party skills have their own music request syntax (usually in the form of “Alexa, ask <skill> to play…”) which can be a little more cumbersome than native Alexa streaming music requests, and with a more limited set of commands. Furthermore, they cannot be used within routines, alarms nor in echo multi room music groups. They also require your tracks to be properly tagged with info such as artist name, track title, album etc in order to facilitate their selection.