Feature Request: Cast to Echo Device

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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41

This is also a feature which I’m craving for since I own Plex, in fact playing my music on echos was the only reason to purchase my plex pass. Back when the Alexa Skill was released i was totally disappointed as not usable in other languages than english and far worse, there was not way to cast directly while using the app without using voice. This is a killer feature necessary for the rest of the non-us world

42

Just bought an Echo dot, it is a lot limited than I thought it would be - because of features missing like this with my existing software such as Plex.
I can ask it to play songs and bands via voice, and it mostly gets them right - but it’d be much neater if I could cast using a phone app or web interface instead.

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43

What you are describing to me seems to be a Plex limitation. I bought a Lifetime Plex subscription to find lot of limitations, problems and errors. Just dump a log and you will see lot of errors. The 2 limitations that most I care right now are casting to Amazon devices and Gapless on LG TV’s.

44

How is it impossible when we can do it in the Spotify app.

(Honest question, hope it doesn’t sound snarky.)

45

I would also love this feature.
For me the ability to be able to browse by folder would be the number one thing.

46

Plex team: given that this is possible from Spotify, seems like one of three things is true:

  1. Spotify has a deal with Amazon to use a privately maintained API to which they have exclusive access
  2. Spotify reverse engineered and/or is using unsupported API calls for Spotify Connect
  3. This wasn’t previously possible but has been added to the public API after the last update on this thread from a Plex employee (almost a year ago!)

I’m probably not alone here in that my music consumption is shifting more and more towards Alexa devices. I’m a bit worried that Plex is falling behind the curve on this trend (prioritizing game streaming over basic player functionality leaves me pretty baffled). Note that adding this feature (again, if possible as of 2/2021) would provide us with workarounds for several other shortcomings of the Alexa skill, such as the inability to specify a disc in a multi-disc set or jump to a specific track number on a disc.

47

bump! Any update

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48

A possible workaround is to connect your phone or other device that contains Plex player to your Alexa smart speaker via bluetooth. I did it and was able to play music on plex on my phone and listen on my Amazon Echo. I used my phone as a remote control for the Echo.

49

Bluetooth, although mentioned multiple times. I of no use. I have a large house and my phone always with me. The music would permanently stop once i leave reach and furthermore all calls, incoming messages are also transferred via the speakers.

50

As I’ve said before over the years this is not something we can do. The big subscription services such as Spotify, Tidal, etc use a completely different audio player framework that allows them to support casting. We cannot use that same framework for personal media due to a number of technical limitations.

I use Alexa every single day. I want this to work more than anybody. But unless something changes with the API we can’t support it. I’m going to close this thread so you all get your votes back to use elsewhere. In the event the landscape changes I’ll gladly open this back up to further comment.

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