Do I Need Amazon Prime To Use Alexa

Amazon'south popular Echo speaker system (and the personal assistant Alexa that comes with it) seem completely enmeshed with Amazon ecosystem, just does that mean you lot demand a Prime account to take advantage of the Echo?

Repeat Tricks for Everyone: Alexa Inquiries, Sports, Traffic, Podcasts, and More than

You can absolutely employ a all of the Repeat products, including but not limited to, the Echo, Repeat Dot, and Echo Show without purchasing a Prime membership. The vast majority of features are attainable regardless of whether or not you take a Prime business relationship including a wide range of the features we've written about here at How-To Geek.

RELATED: The Best Third-Party Alexa Skills on the Amazon Echo

Sans Prime number membership you lot can use the communication features of the Echo to call and bulletin your friends likewise as use your Echo devices as an intercom system in your abode. As well, you don't need Prime to inquire general inquiries of Alexa, bank check the weather, traffic, or sports scores, set up alarms and timers, or add things to your shopping list. You tin can even listen to the news likewise equally enjoy podcasts.

Even some of the features that seem similar they should exist premium features are free for apply, including the ability to expand the Echo with tertiary-party skills that permit you lot to do all sorts of neat things similar control your media eye with your vox or trigger smarthome products like your lights.

That's the good news! You become admission to almost everything for the price of the Echo unit of measurement itself. At present let's take a look at what you miss out on (and how to fill in the biggest hole life without Prime creates).

Echo Tricks for Prime Subscribers: Shopping, Sectional Deals, and Music

RELATED: How to Order About Anything from Amazon Using the Amazon Echo

There are three things you miss out on if you lot're using the Echo without a Prime account. The first two missing pieces may or may not thing to you: voice-activated shopping and exclusive deals for Primer owners with Echo units.

While not everyone finds the act of request Alexa to buy something especially appealing—I know I like comparison shopping on the web instead, looking at reviews, and manually ordering the item—information technology is pretty slap-up to hands reorder something from your kitchen correct when you realize y'all ran out of it by simply telling Alexa to do then. Without Prime, you lose that the-future-is-now super ability.

In improver, Amazon has heavily promoted the apply of the Echo system past offering Echo-only deals to Prime members wherein yousmust society the item through Alexa in order to get the discount or to go the detail at all—a rather clever fashion to go people using a system they might be otherwise indifferent to trying out.

Those problems aren't necessarily deal breakers for virtually people, but the big feature you'll definitely miss out on Prime Music without a Prime account. Out of the box admission to the Prime Music library, wherein you can effect uncomplicated commands to Alexa like "Alexa, play some culling rock" or "play some Billy Joel" and go easy access the millions of songs in the Prime number library, is a feature that most Repeat users, myself included, love.

All is not lost, on the music front, if you don't have Prime though. Let's take a look at how to make full the hole left by Prime number Music with other music services and content.

How to Fill the Prime Music Gap

There are a few ways you tin can become about filling the hole in your Alexa feel left past the absenteeism of the Prime number Music library and how you go near doing that hinges a lot on how yous want to engage with your music.

If yous're primarily interested in using the Echo for ambient background music without a focus, necessarily, on specific songs, then using Pandora with the Repeat is a cracking choice. Y'all tin use a complimentary Pandora business relationship with ads, or $36 a year for premium ad-free service. Activating Pandora with your Repeat is as simply as opening up the "Books and Music" menu in the Alexa app and plugging in your login credentials under the entry for Pandora.

If you require a more focused experience where you can selection private songs and build playlists, Spotify is $ix.99 a calendar month (the complimentary option doesn't work with the Echo) and tin also be easily linked in the same "Books and Music" card in the Alexa app. If you go with either Pandora or Spotify, do check out our guide to irresolute the default music service on the Echo. Without the change you take to specify the service proper name like "Alexa, play the Pearl Jam station on Pandora", but with the default switched to that service you no longer need to call it out by proper noun.

For services that don't accept direct Echo support (or require premium service) you can always—at the cost of losing vocalisation integration with Alexa—simply pair your mobile device with the Repeat via Bluetooth.

In addition if yous want to supplement those ii streaming services with music of your ain, you tin can also upload up to 250 MP3s to your Amazon account (no Prime number membership necessary) and they will be accessible through your Echo.

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Finally, if you lot're on the contend nigh picking up a dedicated streaming service, we'd recommend you read our breakdown of everything you lot get with your Amazon Prime business relationship. Prime offerings might have been sparse back in the day, but if you're considering paying $36-120 a year for simply music streaming you might reconsider and pay $99 for Prime number where y'all'll get not only Prime Music simply a huge pile of other benefits like unlimited photo storage, streaming video, costless books and sound books, and more.