My problem is not starting to play but continuing to play as playback stops after about a minute.
I’ve tried starting a few albums/tracks on mine, playing around 10 tracks all the way though; I haven’t experienced any stopping ahead of time.
On one occasion, when asking for an album, I did experience no music appearing after Alexa’s confirmation; however, it all worked fine when I asked a second time.
Scrub this; I’ve now experienced a track stopping after about 1 minute The next track I tried played fine; strange…
I too had an issue where if I tried to rely on the UPnP settings it didn’t work but manually setting the port it worked just fine. Could very easily be an issue with my router and not the skill.
Here’s hoping that we get music playing on echo groups soon though. With Amazon discontinuing the ability to upload music, this has quickly become the only way to get music playing on it that you didn’t buy on the store. (Like RWBY Volume 1 which got removed for some reason.)
I just wanted to chime in and mention that I am also experiencing a similar problem that others have mentioned: I ask my echo device to play a song from plex, and my echo announces that it is playing that song, though there is no sound that comes out of my echo device after this announcement.
I did notice something unusual… While the plex server is at my house and my original echo and second-generation dot on my home network (same as the plex server) will have this silence issue, I can remotely access my plex server from my friend’s house, and his first-generation and second-generation echo dots will successfully play the requested song. I’m not sure why this works while accessing my server remotely and fails when accessing the server on the same network for my echo devices. Could be coincidental, but I just don’t know enough on why this happens, but I thought I would add my experience if it helps to diagnose this issue that others may be having.
So, I’ve paid for an Amazon Echo, I’ve paid for Plex Pass and run PMS on a Qnap, but I have to jump thru hoops to maybe get Echo to play my music from my server. What a load of crap. So far, I’ve been able to route to smart-phones, my TV, etc without any problems. I can Wifi to my smartphone and play on my smartphone or on a Bluetooth speaker. Of course, I can relay to an Echo like I can other bluetooth devices. So, it makes no sense whatsoever that Echo cannot simply serve up the music over Wifi, just like my smartphone is able to do.
When I make a request like, “Alexa, tell Plex to play music by [xxx],” the response is something like, “OK, playing music by [xxx].” Then nothing. In the Plex web app, the Alerts Status indicates the server never gets my request. I’ve confirmed that Alexa is aware of my server and library by requesting obscure tracks that are on my server, and well known artists that are not on my server. I get expected responses to these requests, but nothing plays.
This is telling me that the problem is with Plex rather than Amazon.
Just want to chime in and say how much I’m enjoying this feature. Seriously, it’s probably my favorite Alexa integration.
I hope in the future that Plex Cloud can be supported. Right now, Plex via Alexa always reports that it’s offline, which lines up with some of the Plex Cloud documentation I’ve read up on. But honestly, as-is is pretty damn awesome once you get it working. The music comes through very clear.
Note, I avoided all the issues in this thread by manually poking a hole in my firewall and ensuring that Plex on external devices (cell phone, Plex instances outside of my LAN) always saw my Plex music instance as directly available and SSL/encryption set to “always.”
Note, I avoided all the issues in this thread by manually poking a hole in my firewall and ensuring that Plex on external devices (cell phone, Plex instances outside of my LAN) always saw my Plex music instance as directly available and SSL/encryption set to “always.”
What do you mean precisely by “external devices always saw my Plex music instance as directly available” does this relate to a Plex media server setting?
@“dseanjj@yahoo.com” said: @Geoff555, mine plays all the way thru. Follow the steps in my first post and yours should come up with no problem. It’s all about getting that remote access settings correct. The only issue that I have with plex is that I speak fast and it often confuses what I said, or I’ll have two songs with the same name and it won’t differentiate between the two.
I already had remote access working (but wasnt using port 32400), but I tried your suggestion anyway and changed my plex settings and router port forward settings to use 32400. Still experiencing the same issue. Alexa/echo can access my plex library, find a song, and announce it is playing it, but the song doesnt play.
My settings stay remote access is working, Alexa discovers my plex music / library, confirms songs etc, and then plays silence. (Gen 1 echo)
Note, I avoided all the issues in this thread by manually poking a hole in my firewall and ensuring that Plex on external devices (cell phone, Plex instances outside of my LAN) always saw my Plex music instance as directly available and SSL/encryption set to “always.”
What do you mean precisely by “external devices always saw my Plex music instance as directly available” does this relate to a Plex media server setting?
It’s not a setting that I ever specifically configured - but if you install Plex on your phone and attempt to access a Plex server remotely and it can’t directly access it directly (via IP/port), in some cases it will give you a warning about “indirect access” and that the quality is lower. It would also not show the lock icon for that server in my list of Plex servers. I couldn’t tell you exactly when Plex makes this happen - perhaps when other Plex servers can see a Plex instance, but the Plex client cannot directly connect itself and it’s doing some uPNP or multicast thing? I never ran a network trace to figure out why it was doing it, just know it was when it couldn’t access my server directly via IP/Port.
What I’ve sort of divined from all these posts is that the best troubleshooting tool was my phone with Plex installed and talking via LTE to my Plex music instance. That’s basically how Alexa is seeing it from what I understand. I didn’t even bother trying to get Alexa to work with Plex until I I could access it directly and secured on my phone over LTE.
@dougthegreat Thanks Doug but I think my router/Plex server was properly configured. My issue was songs stopping after a few seconds, as opposed to not starting at all.
I have had this problem for weeks but suddenly this morning it started working. The only difference I can think of between today and any other is that I inadvertently left the Echo on over night. I can’t see any update arriving overnight but I know my Plex server carries out various admin tasks through the night. Just wondering if this fixed it.
@Geoff555 said: @dougthegreat Thanks Doug but I think my router/Plex server was properly configured. My issue was songs stopping after a few seconds, as opposed to not starting at all.
I have had this problem for weeks but suddenly this morning it started working. The only difference I can think of between today and any other is that I inadvertently left the Echo on over night. I can’t see any update arriving overnight but I know my Plex server carries out various admin tasks through the night. Just wondering if this fixed it.
The Echo is always on. Do you unplug it every night?
@Geoff555 said: @dougthegreat Thanks Doug but I think my router/Plex server was properly configured. My issue was songs stopping after a few seconds, as opposed to not starting at all.
I have had this problem for weeks but suddenly this morning it started working. The only difference I can think of between today and any other is that I inadvertently left the Echo on over night. I can’t see any update arriving overnight but I know my Plex server carries out various admin tasks through the night. Just wondering if this fixed it.
The Echo is always on. Do you unplug it every night?
I normally switched it off over night as it was not needed.
Interestingly, mine’s started working today - I’d all but given up on it so I’d removed the skill and removed the remote access a few days ago. Today, I thought I’d give it another go - I configured remote access using the default port, setting this up in the Plex server, the Synology firewall and the port forwarding on the router (both TCP and UDP), I then re-enabled the Plex Skill. I have played several tracks from several artists without interruption. Only once did I get an error where Alexa said “couldn’t access your Skill”.
I have the Echo, the router (inc wifi) on permanently but the Synology server is powered down over night - it’ll be interesting to see if it still works tomorrow…
I was able to get it working with both a static IP mapping and UPnP. The issue is NAT loopback - the server uses the external IP address to attempt to connect to an internal server. This needs to be fixed, but the workaround for Linksys routers is to turn off (uncheck) the option “Filter Internet NAT Direction”. For me, this is on the Security > Firewall page.
Hey, I wanted to report that today my Plex skill started working properly! This morning - for the first time ever - it was able to play more than one song in a row! Before today could usually play one song but it would never play two in a row. Albums, playlists, etc. would always stop after the first song unless I said “Alexa resume” or similar.
It’s kept it up as I was writing this and also hasn’t had any skips or pauses either.
My router (Netgear Nighthawk) got a firmware update yesterday, so perhaps that’s related?
Not totally reliable yet - I asked Alexa to tell Plex to play the same artist as yesterday. Yesterday, it carried on playing until I stopped it, today it stopped after one track.
Well, after weeks of debugging and giving up… I saw the posts that it started working and I tried again.
Surprisingly playing music via Alexa works great.
Definitely something in the plex skill changed, I wish someone would have updated the community…
@mamvcivm said:
Not totally reliable yet - I asked Alexa to tell Plex to play the same artist as yesterday. Yesterday, it carried on playing until I stopped it, today it stopped after one track.
Yep, was having that happen last night on a playlist. If I said “Alexa, play the next track” it would do it, but never took the initiative herself!
The next track I tried played fine; strange…
(Like RWBY Volume 1 which got removed for some reason.)