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Multiple accounts with Alexa/Sonos

OpenRoad
Local Performer

Hello - We have a pandora premium family account with multiple family members who all want to play their own music, manage channels, etc.  We use Amazon devices throughout our home.   How can I setup Pandora and Alexa to work together so that, for example, on the kids devices they can add channels, etc against their account - instead of mine.   

 

I don't want all of my channels mixing with theirs. 

Thanks.

 

Moderator Edit: Edited title for clarity

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36 Replies

AlyssaPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

@DinoG Thanks for letting me know. Sounds like you two are all set now. 

Feel free to reach out if you need anything else, I'm always happy to help.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the tunes. 🎶

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davesinger
Local Performer

After much searching I found the solution.

I love that I can play my music all over the house while my family is gone and we can all listen to our own music in our own spaces or wherever we are in the house.

** Warning little rant first **

I must say WOW, what a bunch of unhelpful "Answers". The problem really is with poor documentation for Alexa and Household Profiles. I understand Alexa is not a Pandora product but as others have said if they can't listen to their music... they will just switch to Amazon music. These were people paying for a family account. That's just money lost to Pandora. And don't think it is just the few making comments on the forums. Most people will not find this thread and give up while some will read this and just give up. A pretty compelling reason to find the answer for your users.
On that note, why in the world would an Pandora community account be required to read these forums? That stopped me from coming here for about a month. Totally needed for someone to leave a comment but to read... makes no sense.

* end rant *

Answer:

Credit where credit is due... I found the answer in a Time.com article from 2017: time dot com/4668359/amazon-echo-alexa-multiple-accounts/

It and many other articles that talk about setting up the household talk about doing it in the Alexa app on your phone but it can't be done there anymore. It has to be done on the primary Amazon account from a web browser, link later in instructions.

The key thing that most articles and the posts in this thread miss is switching Amazon accounts/profiles on the echo devices. I finally found that in the cited article. "Alexa, switch to <account user's first name> account[or profile]".

Here are the steps in sequence so people don't have to do lots of reading to put it together.

1) The account the echo's should be connected to should be the account that is or will be set up with household profiles, AKA the one that you are paying for prime on. FYI: Prime benefits are shared to the other accounts in the household profiles.

2) Set up household profiles: www amazon com/myh/households. Really cool other benefits it tells you on that page! Free shipping, prime videos, ... on each person's Amazon account. Note the limits on number of adults and children and the privileges for them.

3) Sign into the Alexa app on a phone with the primary account user/pw.

4) Install the Pandora skill and link it to that person's Pandora account.

5) On another phone (or log out of Alexa app then start it up again) log into another Amazon user's account (I used to be able to just ask Alexa to switch accounts).

6) Go to the skills and now set up Pandora to connect to that user's Pandora account.

7) Repeat #4 , #5, and #6 for other members of the household.

😎 Each user can train Alexa to recognise their voice, then they can say "Alexa switch to my account".

9) When you want to listen to your own station's, the echo you talk to needs to have your account active. You can ask "Alexa, identify account" and she will say who she thinks you are by your voice then who's account is active. Or you can just say "Alexa, switch to my account". Of course if you know the echo is on your account there is no need to do either of those.

10 Finally, now Pandora will play the music linked with the active Amazon user on that echo device you are speaking to.

You can tell it to play on other devices or groups and it doesn't matter what Amazon account they are on.

Don't worry, switching accounts while music is playing does not change what or where music plays.

CunninW31
Local Performer

Ok Here is the  question.

We have a family plan, all the account have different email addresses. We also have Echo Dots all over the house, 2 children each child has one in their room, we have one in the adults bedroom, one in the kitchen, and one in the living room. all the dots currently share the same Pandora account meaning that my son and daughter cannot listen at the same time.

How do we set up either the Pandora account or the amazon accounts so that my son can listen to his echo dot while my daughter is listening to hers? 

I've looked into the Amazon Household feature however according to Amazon, "Echo devices cannot be registered to teen logins at this time" 

Are you guys aware of any workarounds? I love Pandora, I had premium as a college kid and, i would hate to have to explore other options if this isn't going to work, but if any of you have teen daughters then you know if they cant have their music they make your life nuts lol .

 

Thank you for all the help

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TannerPandora
Moderator
Moderator

Hi @CunninW31!

I moved your message over to an existing thread: Multiple on Pandora Family Account with Alexa/Sonos

A helpful listener has posted a solution that has worked for them. You can check out their post here to see if it will help. 

Thanks for posting!

 


Tanner | Community Moderator

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jdunne5250
Local Performer

I want to share stations between multiple accounts within my family without the "make it my own" thing.  I want a single station that is actually shared and synchronized both ways between family members.  

 

My actual use case is to have an account signed into my Amazon Alexa which can play at the same time as my personal account.  I've found this isn't possible, so I'm trying to come up with a solution.

 

My plan is to create a separate account that we'll use for our Amazon Alexa and share certain stations with that account.  This would enable anyone in my family to listen to my station on the Alexa without having to be logged in as me.   It seems that the station sharing doesn't work the way I want, so this solution does't work either.

 

This is actually a whole lot easier when you don't pay for Pandora because you can just sign into the same account on multiple devices and it doesn't complain at you for having multiple streams.  When I signed up for Pandora Premium Family I thought I was getting 6 streams which would allow this.  Failing that I figured a dedicated Alexa account would solve the problem. 

There seems to be no way to give money to Pandora to solve this problem.

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AdamPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

@jdunne5250 I moved your message over to an existing thread: Multiple on Pandora Family Account with Alexa/Sonos

Sharing stations:

Unfortunately, there isn't a way to share stations between accounts without having to go through the process of "making them your own" once they are shared.

I recommend creating a feature request for your suggestion here. 💡

Multiple users on Alexa:

A helpful listener has posted a solution that has worked for them - you can check out their post here to see if it will help. 

Thanks for being a part of the Community! :pandora:


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jlologin
Local Performer

Second this.  I bought this to be able to leave something playing on Sonos in the house for the family while I went walking and listened on my phone.  I will absolutely be canceling if this doesn't work - and likely just moving to another service that will work for us.

Tetejean
Local Performer

I have the family plan and have three accounts on. I would like to add an Alexa account. How?

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AdamPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

@Tetejean I moved your message over to an existing thread: Multiple on Pandora Family Account with Alexa/Sonos

A helpful listener has posted a solution that has worked for them - you can check out their post here to see if it will help. 

Hope we continue to see you around the Community! :pandora:


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MusicFan12123
Local Performer

Agreed.  I'm just grateful I signed up with the trial period first as I had set up to do the year subscription for the Family plan.  So I'll be able to cancel before being charged.  

This completely defeats the point of the "Family" plan.  There's no good justification for not enabling 6 streams on a single "Family" account.  This should have been fixed before it left the drawing board.  

The "solutions" for enabling my kids to listen to music without kicking each other off are asinine and overcomplicated and not usable.  

When the engineers work out a real solution, I'll be back.  

choseph
Underground

100%.  I've loved Pandora (paid, non-premium) for so many years...way back since yahoo music shut down.  I decided to go Family Premium at 3x the cost just for the rare monthly inconvenience of overlapping streams.  Lo and behold it doesn't solve this simple use case. 

Please don't tell me to get amazon household because that requires a prime account, and is still horribly awkward on changing accounts and only works for Alexa services.

Please don't tell me to stream from the pandora account on the phone because then we can't easily all control the sonos on shared stations and use the play button directly on the sonos speakers.  Telling us to treat Sonos as a dumb chromecast instead of the hub it is, is not an answer, particularly with two pre-teens that like music but don't have phones.

I appreciate that you (support) are trying to unblock people and these may work for some scenarios, but we really need a service solution here.  If the issue is licensing costs then I'm already paying for 6 streams and 99% of the time only using 1.  You can just count my streams instead of counting my accounts.

If we can't eventually get a service solution instead of these poor workarounds, I'm afraid I'll be facing another loss-history like when yahoo music went under as I move to another service.  With a few seed songs it really isn't so bad, but I'd rather stay a passionate Pandora supporter.

choseph
Underground

Ugh, so looking around it seems Spotify and Amazon music have this exact same issue - a race to the bottom.  Netflix allows dual device streaming even on the simplest tier and they convinced me to go to their highest just for more simultaneous devices (NOT ACCOUNTS).  Someone please innovate here and solve this dumb problem in the music industry and I'll switch.  Pandora, if you solve it first I'll sing your praises from the rooftops and upgrade to top tier.  Until then I'll be on the absolute cheapest plan possible.

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Acornlock
Local Performer

I have a pandora account, my wife has a different pandora account.  I have tried to get alexa to play my pandora account. It always defaults to her account.  How do I set up Alexa to play either account as we select. We have tried linking each separate accounts and doing voice recognition but alexa will only play her account.

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wrekone
Local Performer

@davesinger 

This is a great post. Very helpful and I agree with everything in your "rant".

One use case this doesn't seem to work for is children in your Amazon Household. They can't log directly into any Amazon apps. The parent account has to log in and then set the device (phone, tablet, etc.) up for the child to use. That means that connecting Pandora to the Alexa app still connects Pandora to the signed-in parent's Amazon account in the Amazon Household. So again, the child cannot access their Pandora profile on their own Alexa.

I'm hoping that I misunderstood something or that you've found further workarounds for children in your Amazon household in the time since your original post.

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dreamsalon-2018
Local Performer

If I get a family plan can I listen to different stations on the same device? I have a Sonos system so theres a speaker in each rooms. Everything runs from my iPad on one device

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TannerPandora
Moderator
Moderator

Hi @dreamsalon-2018! Thanks for posting! I moved your message over to an existing thread that I believe is similar to your question: Multiple accounts with Alexa/Sonos

While you can group your Sonos speakers to allow for a single Pandora account to be heard in multiple locations, only one stream (a single station, playlist, etc.), from one account can play across the grouped speakers at the same time.

Sonos does allow for multiple accounts on one device and each of those accounts can be associated with a Pandora account, that should allow for different stations on different speakers. For more information on how to set this up I would reach out to Sonos directly. I did find some helpful information here: Sonos Support

 


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Greegirl58
Local Performer

Just in case you or someone else is having this problem you need to set alexa up to recognize your voice go to your alexa and say alexa recognize my voice then you can both say alexa play pandora and it will play off of the account t your voice is linked to otherwise you have to say Alex change account to your account name every time or you will both keep playing off the default account sorry I suck at spelling but am **ahem** good at getting g alexa google wize and multiple smart products to all work together fyi Google home and Alex can operate each other's devices

 

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