Ask Edwin: How can I play free music on my Alexa / Amazon Echo?

Do you have an Amazon Prime membership or pay for Spotify Premium? If so, my answer could change.The best way I have found to play music for free on Alexa is to create a free Pandora account and connect it to Alexa through the Alexa app. The downside is that there are intermittent ads that play in between songs, and you cannot choose a specific song for it to play.For example, if you have Alexa set up in the kitchen and you are ready to make dinner, you can just say, "Alexa, play Grateful Dead radio on Pandora."Pandora plays songs by the artist and songs related to the artist. You can tailor your station by saying, "Alexa, I like this song," or, "Alexa, I don't like this song." Over time, your playlist will be better suited to you. You can have many radio stations with different artists or genres.

STEPS

Download the Pandora app and create a free account.Go to your Alexa app, find the gear icon for Settings.Find 'Music & Media' and connect your Pandora account to your Alexa.Say "Alexa, play ____ on Pandora."iHeartRadio is a service similar to Pandora so you could experiment with using that instead of Pandora. All the steps to setup and listen would be the same. I don't have any experience with iHeartRadio though.I hope this helps! Let me know if you have further questions,EdwinPS. My favorite thing to do with Alexa is to tell it my shopping list. I will go around to each cupboard and to the fridge and say things like, "Alexa, add eggs to the shopping list." At the grocery store, I get out my phone and can see the list I created, and cross off each item as I get them.