Echo Multi Stream Not Working Anymore?

[CChamp]

Hi all, last Christmas I bought a couple of dots, one for the living room and one for the kitchen. I signed up for Amazon Prime with the Music Unlimited, 7.99 package. I was able to get two streams at one time. Like Country in the kitchen and rock in the living room. This was ideal so I bought a few more dot's for my workshop, bathroom etc. It was great, I listened to AC/DC in my shop while my wife listened to country in the kitchen.

Anyway, a couple of days ago it all stopped. Almost on the exact day that the new addition of the multiroom sync started the multi stream stopped. Now when I am playing rock in the workshop and my wife starts country in the kitchen (or anywhere else) her dot says "Amazon music is already streaming on another device, would you like to change to this device?"

Some people say this is a bug of the new update, I called Amazon and they say that they have changed their policy and you now have to have their "Family Plan" to do this. That is double the price.

Is everyone experiencing this and if so, what are your opinions? Thanks in advance for the help.

[Yorga]

Yes I'm experiencing exactly the same issue since the multi-room feature went live this week and like you every time I try to start a second stream I get "Amazon Music is streaming on another device. Would you like to stream to this device instead". I logged a ticket through the app and got this somewhat garbled response which I interpret as backing up what you say:

"Please allow me to explain this to you.

On Echo devices, you'll be able to play music only on one device at a time and after reviewing all the feedbacks given by our customers a new feature has been updated so that customers can access music on multiple devices which is the "Multi-Room" feature."

I spent an hour with their support line, the agent had me reset 2 Dots to no avail and said they would kick it over to the technical department and get back to me in 3-5 days. I saw a thread on the Amazon Customer Discussion forum that mentioned it would take Family Plan to get it to work now, not sure whether this is a bug or the closure of a "loop-hole".

I have 3 Dots and 2 Echoes so I'm not best pleased about this as there are five people here who often listen to different things. Multi-room is a gimmick at best for me. If they want to push people to Family Plan that is their prerogative but I would have appreciated a bit more notice. I can't remember if I ever read about multiple Echoes being able to stream as a legitimate feature but I'm sure it must have been (given the well publicised and enforced one-device-at-a-time limit across phones\Fire TV etc.). I've invested heavily in their platform at the moment and don't really appreciate the fact that I need to double my outlay to acieve functionality I've had for the past 9 months.

[mike27oct]

I have avoided this problem all along with both my Amazon and Google Home AI devices; I just never subscribed to their music.  I listen to my own digitized music (or music from a streaming service such as Slacker or my eMusic service. 

My solution for five different people listening to their different choices of music would be to stream music from other sources as I do, and send the music via BT to individual Dots.  Everyone likely has a cell phone or tablet to do this with.  So try this solution. and quit giving Amazon (or Google) money for their crappy and pricey music service.