How to Play Music on Echo and Bluetooth Speaker

Evan Gower January 17, 2020

Amazon Echo is certainly the most popular smart speakers in the United States. The built-in Alexa allows you to do a number of things in the comfort of your home easily and intuitively.

How to Play Music on Echo and Bluetooth Speaker

It’s also a pretty good speaker in itself. It isn’t going to drop an audiophile’s jaw but it will satisfy your everyday needs. If you want to fill your home with music when you have people over, you might want to connect it to a Bluetooth speaker.

Pairing Amazon Echo to a Bluetooth Speaker

A few years back, the only way you could enhance the Amazon Echo’s listening experience was through the affordable Echo Dot. This little speaker could deliver an improved listening experience if you happened to own a high quality Bluetooth speaker. Soon enough, Amazon released an update for the entire range.

Since a couple of years ago, users can connect their Echo devices to any Bluetooth speakers out there. This is pretty neat, seeing as how the Bluetooth speaker technology is on the rise these days. The tiniest devices are able to achieve superb audio quality.

Here’s how to pair your Amazon Echo with a Bluetooth speaker.

Connecting

Most modern soundbars are Bluetooth-enable but not all of them. Even then, there is a way around it if yours isn’t. For about $20, you can get a Bluetooth receiver that will allow you to connect your non-Bluetooth speakers to an Amazon Echo.

To begin, turn the Bluetooth speaker on and put it in pairing mode. If your speaker doesn’t feature Bluetooth, turn both the speaker and the receiver on. To proceed, you’re going to have to access Alexa. To do this, you either have to visit alexa.amazon.com on a web browser or download the Alexa app for your Android or iOS device.

In the menu towards the left, navigate to Settings and select this option. You’ll see the Devices menu that lists all available Alexa devices. Select the device that you wish to pair and then select Bluetooth and tap Pair a New Device. Under Available Speakers, you should find your Bluetooth. Be patient as it may take some time for it to appear. Once you see it on the list, select it. Your Bluetooth speaker and Alexa should notify you of a successful connection.

All audio sources to your Amazon Echo will now be played on your Bluetooth speaker. This goes for the music that you stream and also every Alexa action.

If you run into connectivity issues, restart both devices and reconnect them. It may also happen that your devices are disconnected. This happens with portable Bluetooth speakers when they have been idle for some time in an effort to conserve the battery. Turn the Bluetooth speaker back on and your Echo should connect to it automatically. If not, reconnect the two manually as described above.

If your devices won’t reconnect, go to the Alexa app and find the Bluetooth speaker and select Forget Device. Then, perform the pairing once again.

Disconnecting

If you want to disconnect a Bluetooth speaker from your Amazon Echo, go to the Bluetooth settings on your Echo/Alexa app. Then, expand the menu next to the connected speaker (arrow pointing downward) and select Disconnect. Alternatively, power it off to disconnect. With the latter, your Bluetooth speaker will likely connect to your Echo automatically when turned on in the vicinity.

Pairing a Bluetooth Speaker to Your Echo

As you can see, the pairing is fairly straightforward. Your Echo device should be able to connect to any Bluetooth speaker or receiver out there. This is a rather neat feature that may improve your Amazon Echo experience in the audio department.

What Bluetooth speaker have you paired with your Amazon Echo? How did it perform? Do you favor this feature? Be sure to check out the comments below if you have any questions or tips.