Using a Network Drive

[Laika]

I have a WD My Book Live on the same network as my Echo Dot. It has 100's of albums not on Amazon or Spotify. Is there any way I can get Alexa to play that music?

[scottrods]

Yes... with a little fuss though...

theoretically possible by setting up the external drive on a sound bar that is capable of playing the files... I can tell Alexa to turn on "turn on music" (it's set up through Harmony hub as USB input on my soundbar and Named "Music"), and I get music. I have done it with a thumb drive (16 gigs). I plan on copying all my music to a Large capacity thumb drive (128 gig or larger) to reduce the physical presence to an unnoticeable size behind my sound bar. One Caveat... I do not get to Choose so readily as with my mouse and computer... but can let the system play the music for me at least and I can command a few items I have set up with it such as "next song". You may have different results with different equipment. I think any drive that your sound bar can power would work as well as a thumb drive too.

[mike27oct]

Basically, the Alexa devices cannot access anything on the home network, so the way to access your music on the my Book, is to Bluetooth your music playing on a phone or tablet via My Cloud app to a BT receiver device, i.e. a speaker.  I hardly ever do this except maybe to a TAP, the sound of music from a Dot is pretty bad.  I prefer to send my music through the network directly to my stereo or a better BT speaker.

[jim1590]

I am going to say yes with a caveat that I have not tried this yet. I have a large movie collection on Plex, not music. That being said, my movie collection is on a NAS. I am a Plex Pro Pass subscriber and it is well worth the cost to support the development of the program.

https://www.plex.tv/apps/streaming-devices/amazon-alexa/

Next question is will Alexa play your NAS music through its speaker, or feed it to your TV for playing.

[mike27oct]

I have looked into the above link, and PLEX cannot play one's music to/on an Alexa device.  (and that was the OP's original question)  The only way is via bluetooth from a sending device (e.g. a smartphone to an Alexa device via BT.

I set up the Plex Alexa skill today, and what it is supposed to do is send the command from an Alexa device to play something via Plex to a device.  So far, it ain't happening; even though Plex says it sees my server and I have a lot of devices it can play to (e.g. Fire TV, etc).  I will continue to fool around with it to see if it works.

I have many ways to send music to my devices from my network, and Plex is my least preferred way for a variety of reasons.  I use a WDTV or Kodi on Fire TV as a few preferred ways. I find PLEX to be over-blown and over-priced in quite a few ways.  I never use anything other than the free home network features of Plex, and just for experimental purposes.

So far, ALexa devices cannot directly interact with my home server NAS.

[jim1590]

I have looked into the above link, and PLEX cannot play one's music to/on an Alexa device.  (and that was the OP's original question)  The only way is via bluetooth from a sending device (e.g. a smartphone to an Alexa device via BT.

Good to know and thank you for testing it. I have not had a chance to test the skill out yet and as I said above, I do not have much of a music collection. I have not even tried it with my movies yet (about 300 HD movies on a NAS, stops the kids from scratching the dvds) but will try it at some point.

I like it for the GUI on the end device and its ease of use. But, you are correct in that this would not be the answer the OP wants.