Scene: You’re tired. You’ve had a long day. You walk into the house, and you ask Alexa to play a song for you, knowing full well that it’s available in Spotify. Her reply: it’s not available on Prime Music. Now you’re angry. Alexa should know you have your Spotify account linked up, but still it seems like you have to jump through hoops to get her to play music from that service.
There’s a way to make this easier, but you have to dig for it. You can change Alexa’s default music services.
Step 1: Link
First, you need to link your paid Spotify Premium account in the Alexa app. You must have a Premium account to use Spotify on your Alexa-powered devices. If you haven’t already does this, you’ll probably do it in the Music, Video, & Books section of the Alexa app. We say “probably” because that’s the easiest place to find it. It doesn’t matter which Alexa device appears in the header.
Step 2: Choose
Next, if you want Spotify to be Alexa’s first choice for music, you have to set it as your default music service. That’s possible, but it’s buried on a completely different screen.
From the side menu, select Settings. Scroll past all your Alexa devices, down to the Alexa Preferences heading, and select Music & Media.
Next, look below the music services (this is the other place where you can configure those) to Account Settings, and select Choose default music service.
Here you’ll see the default settings. Most likely, Amazon is your default music library and your default station service. If you’ve linked your Spotify account, you make it your default library. When you’ve made your changes, just select Done.
Step 3: Ask and Enjoy
From this point forward, Alexa will first check Spotify when you ask her to play music. No need to specifically tell her you want music from Spotify!
