Easily create your personal playlists, which suite your mood, on your Google Drive and enjoy your favorite music, books and podcasts.
Create unlimited playlists (Free account limited to 10 playlists with 10 tracks per playlist).
Link unlimited Echo devices to the same Google Drive account to share your playlists across your family.
Sound Station will make you an owner of your personal music streaming service.
Simply add your favourite audio collections (music, podcasts, audio-books and etc.) to your personal Google Drive space and enjoy it anytime and anywhere. Travel without losing ability to listen to what you really love.
Create collections for your different moods: to relax, to inspire, to meditate.
Funny fact:
Did you know that you can change your mood, to make yourself feel happier, just by listening to the sound of your voice? According to the scientists you can - http://cream.ircam.fr/
| Feature | Free | Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Shuffle | + | + |
| Next / Previous | + | + |
| Start over | + | + |
| Play / Pause / Stop / Resume | + | + |
| Skip forward / backward | - | + |
| Number of Play lists | 10 | Unlimited |
| Number of tracks per play list | 10 | Unlimited |
| Playback loop | - | + |
| Global mixed playlist | - | + |
| Virtual Links | + | + |
| Search by word | returns single track matching the word | returns all tracks matching the word |
mp3, m4a, aac, ogg, wav, flac, m3u
Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework and NOT supported by Echo devices.
Using Sound Station skill is easy
Spend little time on preparation - create your personal playlists on your Google Drive and upload favourite music, audio books and podcasts, and then use all abilities, provided by the skill, to the full.
* Please note: premium service is currently available in USA, UK, CA, DE, FR, IT and ES store fronts. Amazon constantly expands services, so we hope it will be available in more regions soon.
How To use Sound Stream
How to create playlists:
- link your Google account (or create new Google Free account) with the Sound Station skill using the Alexa mobile app.
- go to your Google Drive > My Drive and create the SoundStation folder.
- create sub-folders with the names of your playlists.
- copy your media files into these sub-folders.
For example:
- Google Drive > My Drive > SoundStation > Relax > waves.mp3, rainforest.mp3,... [you have created music playlist with the name 'Relax']
- Google Drive > My Drive > SoundStation > Sleep Sounds > brown noise.m4a, pink noise.wav,... [you have created music playlist with the name 'Sleep Sounds']
The playlists will be synchronized automatically every time you open the skill.
When the playlist started to play, you can use all commands that you normally use with the default Alexa music player (without using the skill's invocation name):
- Alexa, play.
- Alexa, next.
- Alexa, previous.
- Alexa, loop on.
- Alexa, loop off.
- Alexa, pause.
- Alexa, resume.
- Alexa, start over.
- Alexa, shuffle on.
- Alexa, shuffle off.
- Alexa, stop.
You can ask to play a playlist:
- Alexa, play Jazz from Sound Station
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to play Toy Story.
You can ask to play a song, a book or a podcast by name:
- Alexa, play 'brown noise' from Sound Station
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to play 'Alice in Wonderland'.
Create a global shuffled playlist that contains tracks from all playlists:
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to reshuffle
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to mix everything
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to shuffle all
Note: please do not confuse with the Echo audio player 'shuffle on' / 'shuffle off' commands on a playing playlist.
Fast-forward and rewind through long audio:
- Alexa, stop
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to skip forward 45 seconds
- Alexa, stop
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to move forward 10 minutes
- Alexa, stop
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to go back 1 hour
- Alexa, stop
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to rewind 1 minute
Enable / Disable Alexa feedback (Alexa will speak a playlist name). Enabled by default:
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to enable feedback
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to disable feedback
How to make Alexa identify songs on request:
- Alexa, ask Sound Station what song is playing?
- Alexa, ask Sound Station what is playing?
How to start playlist from the beginning:
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to play the playlist from the beginning
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to play from the start
- Alexa, ask Sound Station to restart the playlist
Virtual Links - save space on your Google Drive:
Create mixed playlists without duplicating files. To use, simply create an empty folder named after your new playlist and add nested empty subfolders named after existing playlists you want to include. Play your virtual playlist with familiar Alexa voice commands.
M3U play lists:
m3u files support available for premium subscribers. This feature enables you to create playlists containing numerous internet radio stations. Find out more here.
You can create Alexa routines for Sound Station based on audio file's name or a playlist's name.
If you need help, please drop us a line: support@voiceactivity.com
Simple tips to get more out of the Sound Station skill
Voice Recognition technology is still developing, so, some times you can find it difficult to make Alexa understanding your request. You can do next simple things to improve accuracy in finding your playlists ot track name:
- Use simpler names for the play lists and items in the play lists. Best results can be achieved when you use one or two words in the play list or item name. Try to avoid using '-', '&', '_' and other special characters in the names.
Example:
bad name format: 01A-Ha-Take_On_Me.mp3
better name format: 01 A Ha Take On Me.mp3
- Try to say or even spell a word, which presents in the play list name, for example you can spell word "R E L A X" to find play list "relax sounds". We added this kind of search possible to make things easier.
Q. Do you support .wma files?
A. The Sound Station supports the only audio files that supported by Amazon Echo devices.
At the moment the Amazon Echo devices family are using the same audio player as all Android phones. This is the open sourced project.
The only files supported by this player are: .mp3, .aac, .m4a, .wav, .ogg, .m3u.
Format .wma is not supported by the player at the moment, and there are no plans to add support any time soon.
If in the future Amazon will make an upgrade on the software and include support other audio files extensions, the Sound Station will support them all out of the box
If you own a collection of .wma files, we would recommend to convert them to one of the supported formats. For example: https://www.howtogeek.com/365208/how-to-convert-a-wma-file-to-mp3/
Q. How much the premium version costs?
A. If premium version is available in your country, subscription costs 1.99 in your country’s currency plus taxes if any.
With premium version you can use unlimited number of Echo devices linked to your account.
Q: How many devices I can use with Sound Station?
A: You can use unlimited number of Echo devices with Sound Station.
Sound Station on each of your Echo devices can be linked to same or different Google accounts (so they can use same or different Google Drive as media source).
Q: Can I use Sound Station with a group of speakers?
A: At the moment Amazon doesn't provide a reliable way of using 3-d party skills with speakers groups. We know that some people managed to do that. But it's not officially supported by Amazon and not reliable.
There is a workaround to use a few Bluetooth speakers connected to each other.
For example, if you have a couple of HK Onyx Mini speakers. These ones support up to 3 speakers in a group. One of them can be linked with one of your Echo dots. Of course it's not the same as an Echo group, but at least it works.