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
“Alexa, play Gangstarr on upstairs”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9lNbNGbo24
does that include firetv/stick?
I was so excited about the Chromecast audio for this reason and bought 4 of them. If I have two in the same room, mere feet away from the access point with no walls between them and I make sure the PC or my phone, plus the two Chromecast audios are the only two devices connected to that AP, it STILL stutters. I’ve tried beta firmware, etc. It flat out does not work reliably. I’ve used an Apple Airport Extreme and a D-Link with 3 radios. Tried 2.4 and 5 ghz, did not matter. The main thing I was interested in was mirroring the audio via the Google Home app on my phone, or the Chromecast plugin on my PC. Really disappointing experience, and they’ve plenty of time to make it better. I wonder if Amazon will offer that capability and do it better.
I am sorry about your luck with them. I have 3 CC Audios and a Google Home and I have never had any trouble streaming to them all as a group. It sounds like you have tried many things. Are you sure it might not be your internet connection itself? If it or even your neighborhood is saturated you could have streaming problems.
It’s just too bad that a device can only belong to one group.