How to listen to music for free with Alexa, via app or Echo

We decided to place the Amazon voice assistant in one of the rooms of our house and we want to use it to be able to listen to some music for free, using only the voice commands to start playback "> Amazon Alexa app, to be installed for free on Android and iOS. It is also possible to open Alexa from PC on the alexa.amazon.com website. We install the app in any case, since it is the only way to correctly configure Alexa's skills and the free music services that we are going to use. If we have not yet configured the Amazon Echo to access the Internet via your home network, we recommend that you first read our article on How to Configure a New Amazon Echo and Alexa Settings .
READ ALSO: How to have Amazon Music Unlimited for only € 4 per month

Amazon Prime Music

All users registered to Amazon Prime benefit from 2 million free songs that can be reproduced without limits and without any type of advertising ; being Amazon Prime well integrated with Alexa, these songs are immediately accessible via voice commands. We first sign up for a subscription to Amazon Prime, as also described in our guide on Amazon Prime (since it is mainly activated to obtain shipping benefits, all the rest of the included services can be considered valid free options).
Once the subscription is signed, all we have to do is say " Hey Alexa " to wake up the device's microphone and use one of the voice commands visible below to start playing the music:

• "Play rock music (or other genre)"
• "Play relaxing music"
• "Play music for training"
• "Play sad music (or other mood)"
• "Play music for party"

Alexa will thus be able to automatically fish from the music playlists present in the Amazon Music service and available for free. Unfortunately, this type of request cannot be used to play music by a specific artist or musical group: we will first have to verify that it is present in the database provided free of charge, otherwise Alexa will ask us (after having pronounced the voice command) if we want to activate the subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited, which provides full access to the entire music database (over 30 million songs for € 9.99 per month).
If the voice commands shown above do not work, we open the Amazon Alexa app on our mobile device, open the menu at the top left (with the three horizontal lines), go to the Settings -> Music -> Default services path and make sure that Amazon Music is selected.

READ ALSO: Music streaming and downloadable with Amazon Music, Spotify alternative

Online radio

With Amazon Alexa, the streaming radio stations of TuneIn are available, one of the largest services for the broadcasting of online radio stations, including many Italian radios. To be able to listen to a specific radio station via our Amazon Echo, simply say " Hey Alexa " and, once the microphone is activated, indicate the station to be reproduced (with a phrase such as "play [name of radio station]").
To find out the radios available with Alexa, we open the app of the same name on our smartphone, go to the Entertainment menu at the bottom and select Browse in music -> TuneIn .

If we cannot find the radio that interests us, we can always search for the specific skill (if it exists): to do this we open the menu at the top left (with the three horizontal lines), select Skill and play then use the search button at the top right to search for the specific radio skill that we intend to add to our Alexa service.

We tap on it, then we press Enable to use to add it to Alexa. From now on, just say "Hey Alexa, start [Name-radio-skill]" to immediately open the enabled skill.

Audio playback via Bluetooth

If none of the methods described has satisfied you, we can always use the Amazon Echo as if it were a simple Bluetooth speaker, so that we can reproduce the audio produced by our smartphone from the apps containing music videos (such as YouTube) or other apps of audio streaming. To do this we always open the Amazon Alexa app on our mobile device, open the now famous menu at the top left (with the three horizontal lines) then go to the Settings menu -> Device settings ; from here we press on the name associated with our Amazon Echo, we tap on the item Bluetooth devices then we press on the button Associate new device .

The search for our smartphone or tablet will now start (which must have Bluetooth already active to appear in the app); as soon as the device to be added appears, we press on its name and confirm where necessary. Once connected, all the audio of our mobile device will be played via the Amazon Echo, so you can listen to music for free. To keep the quality of listening high, we invite you not to leave the Amazon Echo beyond 5 meters.
The same thing can also be done by connecting the PC to an Echo via Bluetooth, to listen to computer music (or from Youtube) on Alexa / Echo.

Conclusions

Listening to free music through the Amazon Echo or through the Amazon Alexa app is possible, just take advantage of the music service included for Prime customers or one of the radio skills integrated in Alexa or that can be integrated at any time. If we want to play the audio of our YouTube or YouTube Music playlists, we can do it by associating our smartphone or tablet with the Echo via Bluetooth technology (it will become a wireless speaker in all respects).
As seen in another guide, you can also play MP3 music and PC songs in wifi, without bluetooth.
If we want to know more about Alexa's other functions, just read our Amazon Echo Functions guide , what it is used for and what it does .
If, on the other hand, we wanted to add Alexa's voice commands to old stereos or speakers without Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, just read our study on how to add Alexa to stereos and speakers with Echo Input .
We want to use speakers other than the Amazon Echo, but with Alexa's voice commands "> Best Alternative Speakers to Echo with Alexa and voice commands.