How is Apple Music playback on Amazon Echo devices? Does Apple have anything as nice as Spotify Connect?
My current setup is that I have an Echo Dot connected by the line out to my A/V receiver, with the microphone turned off. With Spotify Connect the Spotify on my computer or phone can tell the Spotify on the Dot to play a song, album, or playlist. The Spotify on the Dot then streams that music from Spotify. I can turn the computer or phone off and the music keeps playing. Spotify on my computer or phone will show what is playing on the Dot and let me control it.
This works really well. (In fact, it works way better than Amazon Music from my computer or phone works with the Dot. I just finished a 90 day free trial of Amazon Music and one of the reasons I did not subscribe was how poorly Amazon Music works with Echo devices. Spotify completely blows Amazon out of the water there).
What I really like with this is that once I start playback the computer or phone no longer needs to be involved.
I know that there is an Apple Music app for Echo that lets Apple Music be a source for Echo, so that I could say "Play Foo on Apple Music" and Alexa would use Apple Music do do that, but I don't want to choose my music by voice. I want to do the choosing on my Mac or phone/tablet.
>Does Apple have anything as nice as Spotify Connect
It sure doesn't. I generally love Apple Music, but you can really feel the neglect Apple pays to its non-preferred platforms once you attempt to use it on 3rd party hardware.
Listening to Apple Music on the PS5 while playing a videogame is way more kludgy than it needs to be. The little pop-up card in the dashboard never seems to completely match the recently played on my phone, and only provides about a dozen shortcuts to recent plays and albums apparently randomly selected from my library. Launching the full app will often close the game or disconnect it from the internet and send it back to the homescreen. Attempting to use Airplay will, of course, completely exit the game and take over the entire PS5 with Apple TV.
By comparison, the Spotify experience was: Start game. Open spotify, tap Connect. Tap PS5. Play whatever I want, done. This feature was the single biggest factor keeping me on Spotify but after getting an AVR with Atmos support I just couldn't stay on that platform, which seems to get less investment into music related features relative to everything else every year.
This is a very niche and very specific workflow you have. Spotify is the only thing that can do what you want as far as I know.
Ironically Apple used to offer a product to do this more than a decade ago, the Apple Airport Express. It's a wifi access point with a line out. You can still pick one up for ~$20 on eBay and I believe it will still work with Apple music as a target device.
> I know that there is an Apple Music app for Echo that lets Apple Music be a source for Echo, so that I could say "Play Foo on Apple Music" and Alexa would use Apple Music [to] do that…
Yes, this works great.
> …but I don't want to choose my music by voice. I want to do the choosing on my Mac or phone/tablet.
This also works but requires using Bluetooth. There's no way to "hand off" from an iPhone/iPad to Alexa as you can with a HomePod.
My current setup is that I have an Echo Dot connected by the line out to my A/V receiver, with the microphone turned off. With Spotify Connect the Spotify on my computer or phone can tell the Spotify on the Dot to play a song, album, or playlist. The Spotify on the Dot then streams that music from Spotify. I can turn the computer or phone off and the music keeps playing. Spotify on my computer or phone will show what is playing on the Dot and let me control it.
This works really well. (In fact, it works way better than Amazon Music from my computer or phone works with the Dot. I just finished a 90 day free trial of Amazon Music and one of the reasons I did not subscribe was how poorly Amazon Music works with Echo devices. Spotify completely blows Amazon out of the water there).
What I really like with this is that once I start playback the computer or phone no longer needs to be involved.
I know that there is an Apple Music app for Echo that lets Apple Music be a source for Echo, so that I could say "Play Foo on Apple Music" and Alexa would use Apple Music do do that, but I don't want to choose my music by voice. I want to do the choosing on my Mac or phone/tablet.