Easily create your personal playlists, which suite your mood, on your Dropbox 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 Dropbox account to share your playlists across your family.
Sound Stream 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 Dropbox 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 Stream skill is easy
Spend little time on preparation - create your personal playlists on your Dropbox 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 Dropbox account (or create new Dropbox Free account) with the Sound Stream skill.
- the Dropbox > Apps > SoundStream folder will be created for you by Dropbox when you linked your account with the skill.
- create sub-folders with the names of your playlists.
- copy your media files into these sub-folders.
IMPORTANT: In order to integrate your Dropbox account and the skill properly, the email address of your Dropbox account needs to be verified.
https://help.dropbox.com/accounts-billing/settings-sign-in/verify-email
For example:
- Dropbox > Apps > SoundStream > Relax > waves.mp3, rainforest.ogg,... [you have created music playlist with the name 'Relax']
- Dropbox > Apps > SoundStream > Classic > song-1.mp3, song-2.m4a,... [you have created music playlist with the name 'Classic']
- Dropbox > Apps > SoundStream > Pinocchio > chapter-1.wav, chapter-2.wav,... [you have created books playlist with the name 'Pinocchio']
- Dropbox > Apps > SoundStream > Spanish > lesson-1.mp3, lesson-2.mp3,... [you have created a general purpose playlist with the name 'Spanish']
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 Stream.
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to play Toy Story.
You can ask to play a song, a book or a podcast by name:
- Alexa, play 'rain forest' from Sound Stream.
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to play 'Alice in Wonderland'.
Create a global shuffled playlist that contains tracks from all playlists:
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to reshuffle
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to mix everything
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream 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 Stream to skip forward 45 seconds
- Alexa, stop
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to move forward 10 minutes
- Alexa, stop
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to go back 1 hour
- Alexa, stop
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to rewind 1 minute
Enable / Disable Alexa feedback (Alexa will speak a playlist name). Enabled by default:
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to enable feedback
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to disable feedback
How to make Alexa identify songs on request:
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream what song is playing?
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream what is playing?
How to start playlist from the beginning:
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to play the playlist from the beginning
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to play from the start
- Alexa, ask Sound Stream to restart the playlist
Virtual Links:
Create mixed playlists without duplicating Dropbox 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.
You can create Alexa routines for Sound Stream based on audio file's name or a playlist's name.
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.
Every moment together counts, so make the most of family time with these perfect ideas:
- run slideshows from your personal Dropbox with the 'My Slides' skill (search for 'myslides' skill in your Alexa app);
- play you own videos from your Dropbox with the 'My Video' skill (search for 'myvideo' skill in your Alexa app);
If you need help, please drop us a line: support@voiceactivity.com
Simple tips to get more out of the Sound Stream 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 Stream 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 Stream 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, it costs 0.99 per month in your country’s currency plus taxes if any.
With premium version you can use unlimited number of Echo devices linked to your account (in comparison with Amazon Music 14.99 / month for family up to 6 devices maximum and Audible 14.99/month per account and 1 Echo device maximum.)
Q. I already pay subscription for Dropbox, why the Sound Stream skill cannot be either sold for one-off amount or made free of charge?
A. Skills like Sound Stream are complex systems and they constantly use expensive resources at AWS. We have to make it economically sustainable. Without at least minimal subscription it would not be feasible to run such system continuously.
Q: How many devices I can use with Sound Stream?
A: You can use unlimited number of Echo devices with Sound Stream.
Sound Stream on each of your Echo devices can be linked to same or different Dropbox accounts (so they can use same or different Dropbox as media source).
Q: Can I use Sound Stream 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.