Music I Own

[Badger]

Hi all. Apologies first off for the non techie question.

We’ve just bought an Echo Dot. (Set it up yesterday.) First impressions are great and we’re really enjoying what we’ve seen so far. The bit we can’t work out though (probably not the last thing we’ll be scratching our heads over.) is getting it to play music we already own.

We don’t have Amazon Music Unlimited and don’t want it. Almost everything I asked it to play while we were testing last night, came up with no problems, it was terrific. But anything I asked for came with a qualifying comment of “streaming **** and similar from Amazon Music” or words to that effect.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s brilliant. I sat there and almost every song I thought of, I said…. and it played. Perhaps I’m easily pleased, I don’t know. But I just couldn’t help but think, ok we never got jet packs and hover cars, but show me this Echo Dot when I was a kid and I’d have said it was out of a science fiction flick.

But my question is, what about the music we own, that we’ve bought from Amazon over the years.
I can see on my ipad a list of the albums we’ve bought and in the past we’ve been able to “stream” those albums direct from Amazon (I presume from the “cloud”) right there on the ipad. Unless I’m miss remembering. I notice though, while I was investigating this on the ipad yesterday, that while some of them played, others said “sorry no longer available”.  I tried refreshing the library and even reinstalling the music app but it made no difference. In the end I dowloaded one of those “missing” albums and then it played no problem.

So I don’t know. Have things changed? Can I have my Echo Dot stream my bought albums? Ideally I don’t want “yes I‘ll play that track and similar”.  Well…… sometimes that’s fine, but I’ll also want my albums from start to finish sometimes.

Sorry if I’m doing something dumb or missing the obvious somehow. But however I phrase the question on the internet, it keeps telling me about Amazon Music Prime, which is fine but I already know about. Or trying to sell me “Unlimited”, which I don’t want. (Stop it with the unlimited already.)

Many thanks for any advice you can offer.
Badger

PS: hating this double verification before posting thing! Not been on forums in a long time so maybe that’s just the thing now. But what a pain.

[renegade600]

you can use the dot as a bluetooth speaker but you would not be able to use alexa commands or if you have digital copies of the albums, you can set up a media server on your pc and by using mymedia or plex  play your music though their respected skills.   To set up a media server, you would have to leave your computer on 24/7. 

[Badger]

Thank’s for replying renegade.  That’s not what I want though. I realise I could on occasion use the dot as a standalone bluetooth speaker. What I’m trying to find out is what Alexa can and can’t do.

I learned yesterday about creating a playlist and since in my testing, Alexa had played me any song I had asked for, I thought, well I’ll just add my music to a playlist as I go and that’ll be a workaround. But wouldn’t you know it.. last night Alexa stubbornly refused to play 50% of specific tracks I asked for, again wanting to sell me Unlimited. Worked for some tracks, not for others. This is a little confusing.

Anyway, thank’s again for the suggestion.
Badger.

[Badger]

Ok, I’m clearly suffering from a misconception here. Can any of you kind folk, clarify the situation for me in Badger friendly terms. I’ll admit I’m a little frustrated now, but it’s my own fault I know.

I had assumed (see, my old Gran said never to do that.) that the Amazon Music app I installed on my Ipad, was in some ways like “Media Player” on my pc. I’m starting to suspect this assumption was wrong. I thought I could use it to download albums I had bought from Amazon (so, music I own) and listen to them on the Ipad and even to stream the albums direct from the Amazon Cloud if I wanted, without actually having to download them first.

After my initial reaction the other day to the Dot was a bit of a wow moment, with it happily playing almost anything I asked for. Subsequently it seems to of decided to rebel and is instead shuffling something else from the same artist or similar. Rather like a Douglas Adams vending machine, which when asked for a brew, gargled and bubbled before delivering something that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

Experimenting today with the Amazon Music app on the Ipad, I abandoned the idea of streaming anything I owned from the cloud and tried instead to actually download albums. I could see a list of Albums I’d bought from Amazon and at random I tapped one. But then looking in options, showed “download” to be greyed out. Tapping it brought a message saying that to do this I’d have to subscribe to Unlimited. So I can’t download it, even though I own it?

My second choice produced the same result, but then unexpectedly my third choice had the download option available! I looked at a few more and most had download greyed out with the “must have Unlimited” option shown. But interspersed amoung them now and again would be one I was aloud to download. Why am I allowed some but not others?

Clearly the difference between Prime and Unlimited subscriptions is at the heart of my problem here and my misconceptions as to how the app (and possibly the Dot) is supposed to work. Can anyone spell this out for me? Why am I allowed to a few but not the others. For that matter, some on the app will stream without download. But most will pull up the drawbridge and scoff at me from behind the portcullis of Unlimited.  What’s the deal here chaps?
Badger