I fancy one of the new orb Amazon echos, they’re now £60 which I know is a loss leader so that bezos can tie you into his streaming and prime

But anyway, it’s mega cheap for what you get. How restrictive are they?

I just want digital radio and also ability to play my own music, I don’t have a streaming subscription cos I’m old skool and have a massive cd collection.

Has anyone managed to play their own music on an Echo satisfactorily? I know there are work arounds byt don’t know of they’re worth it

I have modest hifi needs and the output of the new echo would be perfect. I’ll admit my head was turned by the gushing guardian review

I’ve a similar interest – but with Google Home. I’ve really no interest in streaming services as I’m properly fussy with what I want to listen to – so if I want to listen to something I buy it then I’ve got it to play.

Except I can’t play it now as my machine with music on it is being used for work duties, so it won’t allow me to play tunes. I’ve got Google Home but since they got rid of Google Play music (really sad about that) and having to move to YouTube Music, it just isn’t doing it so I’m now not listening to music.

I’m wanting somewhere where I can upload my music to and connect my smart speaker/phone/electronic wifi-enabled device to so I can then play my music library – but I can’t find anything that does that. I’m at the point where I’m even considering paying a small fee to have that ability – without adverts as it will just be the music that I’ve bought…but no idea where to find that and also no idea how to get it to work with Google Home.

Can’t really speak for the Amazon kit, but Google Home does offer a number of streaming services that you can link to, there might also be an option to link to an unlisted service – but I’ve not found it yet as I haven’t found a service that does what I want) – I’m guessing the Amazon stuff will do a similar service, but no idea where it would be.

Pretty sure you can “upload” your own music to the Amazon system so you can stream it. Should be able to stream it from there but may have to drive it from the app.

OP, not sure if it’s what you’re after but I link my phone to the Echo device via Bluetooth and use it as a remote speaker, like you I have a music collection, all of which ion my phone.

I’m wanting somewhere where I can upload my music to and connect my smart speaker/phone/electronic wifi-enabled device to so I can then play my music library

you’ll be wanting to run your own Plex server then!

We’ve been though this kind of thing a few times recently.

The way I do it is to upload all my music to Microsoft One Drive (other storage is available), then installed https://www.doubletwist.com/cloudplayer on my phone and connected to the speaker via Bluetooth.

Costs me £2 a month and the storage is universal so it really doesn’t care what I store there.

Other issue with YouTube music is it won’t access your library, it will play whatever it has itself (allowing more ads)…sorry, now on a rant about this so I’ll leave this thread so I don’t hijack it.

buy 2 of what ever ye buy anyhow, and link them up for stereo.

My existing system is Squeezebox based hooked up to my Synology Nas with all my ripped CDs. However the squeezeboxes are dying, it’s a discontinued product and the server stuff is old tech that doesn’t integrate well.

Was looking at the Echo devices but they can’t stream music direct from a NAS, only via the cloud. As I understand it I can get something set up with Synology and Alexa that will stream to the cloud from my server and back but that’s crazy, plus screwed if the broadband drops. The stuff I looked at said there’s no way of doing local streaming.

Plex is a similar solution. Your music can run in the cloud. Okay once up there, streams from Plex cloud. Similarly I can shove stuff on One Drive and there are tools to stream from that, but still would prefer local streaming. Other thing with Plex and others is you have to ask Alexa to ask Plex etc to play a track and it might not be too clever about it as it may lack the meta data that Amazon music has.

Do theses things work without being smart? ie could you just use them as a discounted Bluetooth speaker?

mymediaforalexa – about 5 quid a year I think. Lets you send music from yr pc (or presumably NAS) to the echo

(if I’m not using the PC it goes to sleep and the stream shuts down but I could disable that I suppose)