Spotify family, and Echo Dots, please advise a confused technophobe!

[Cagliostro]

I am thinking of getting my two children an echo dot (or whatever the cheapest one is, will be waiting for the next sale though) for their bedrooms so they can listen to music in their rooms, especially as both have trouble sleeping (or possibly audiobooks would be good but I know I’d have to get a different service for that). I don’t let them have screens in their rooms so they could control it from the Dot by asking it to play whatever.

I currently have Spotify premium myself but I know I’d have to upgrade to family so they could listen to different things, my confusion is though, would they have to have their own devices to have the accounts on? DD has a phone but DS won’t for another two years. I had thought I’d be able to control all of them from the iPad (which is signed into my Spotify) but I’m now thinking it doesn’t work like that.

Any advice please for an idiot 😳

I think with Spotify Family you can have up to 6 separate Spotify accounts but only one stream at a time on the Echo dot.

I prefer Spotify but I think in this case you might be better going for the Amazon Family music package, as you can have the 6 accounts but you can have more than one stream playing on the dots at a time.

There's some really helpful facebook groups for Amazon Alexa...Amazon Echo - UK Alexa Help & Support is especially good for guidance.

I got that a bit wrong...it's two streams with spotify family.
Copyrite Pete Bready from Facebook for the attached image.

I tried both Alexa and google home and much, much prefer the google home. (Mini is £49, £29 on Black Friday).
Google can recognise up to six voices, and associate Spotify accounts with each voice. So wherever in the house they are they can play from their own account. This means you can have multiple accounts playing on multiple devices at the same time.
I'm going to set this up for my gf and two girls this week.
Those Spotify accounts can all be associated to the same Spotify family account (multiple accounts, one £14.99 bill a month)

In answer to your actual question about devices (missed it!) they would not have to have a screen. Could just ask Google to play it. They'd need / want access to a screen to create playlists, browse etc. But they wouldn't need it to play music in their rooms.

Oooh thanks. This is all helpful :)

I don’t really understand what a stream is in this context

So, it would be better to get the small google speaker thingy for each of them, but I could still keep my Spotify (well, upgrade to family)?

My speaker is a Sonos, with Alexa on it, but presumably it doesn’t matter if all the devices can all the Spotify account anyway?

I’ll let DD get Spotify on her phone anyway as she can download on there, but for DS I could create his playlists etc on the website I guess :)

Hi again,
Streaming just means playing media directly from the internet. When you watch iPlayer or Netflix thats streaming. Or in this context playing spotify is streaming.

Specifically the issue is that it's not easy to have many Spotify accounts in the same "environment" (house). there would be ways around it (kids each having their own amazon accounts) but it could easily be a faff. The Google Home solution would be much easier as it supports more spotify accounts straight out of the box.

You could also play things on their Google Home device from your phone - you'd go to spotify, audible (for books and stories), youtube etc and chose the media then press the stream button to chose where to send it - like in the pic.

When it's set up its really easy to use, but if you have a friend or relative who is good with these things you might want them to help set it up. It's just simple on-screen instructions but it might be easier for someone with a bit more confidence and experience.

as you say DD can use her phone to set up playlists (ideal!) but DS can also use your ipad (through app or browser) or any computer.