Alexa has become an integral part of many smart home setups. It integrates with numerous services and hardware, giving homeowners the convenience of operating various devices and services with voice commands. One of the incredible features of Alexa is the ability to play music from popular streaming platforms with a single voice command. However, this doesn’t mean Alexa will play music from all platforms straight immediately.
If you enjoy discovering new artists and resonating with their ideas, SoundCloud is one of the go-to streaming platforms. Unfortunately, Alexa doesn’t officially support SoundCloud. So, how can you play SoundCloud on Alexa?
The easiest way to play SoundCloud on Alexa is by connecting your smartphone or computer to your Echo device over Bluetooth.
This post will walk you through the process of integrating SoundCloud with Alexa to be able to play SoundCloud using voice commands.
Can you play SoundCloud on Alexa?
While Alexa has many functions, it doesn’t directly support streaming music via Soundcloud. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t play SoundCloud on the Amazon Echo device altogether.
There are various ways you can connect your Alexa speakers to SoundCloud and listen to SoundCloud content from your Echo device. You can pair your smartphone with Alexa via Bluetooth or create a skill to control SoundCloud with voice commands.
How to play SoundCloud on Alexa
Despite SoundCloud’s popularity, there is no direct integration between the platform and Amazon’s Echo devices.
Here are ways to circumvent the limitation and stream your favorite songs from SoundCloud:
Pair your smartphone with your Alexa Speaker
Pairing your smartphone with your Alexa via Bluetooth offers the easiest way to play audio from SoundCloud on Alexa speakers.
Interestingly, all modern smartphones come with Bluetooth as a standard feature. All you need is to pair them and play SoundCloud on the connected phone as you would use any other Bluetooth speaker.
There are two ways to connect your smartphone with Alexa via Bluetooth.
1. Pair Using Voice Command
The easiest way to connect your smartphone and Alexa is by asking Alexa to pair directly. Here are steps to use voice commands to pair Alexa to a smartphone:
- Turn your Echo device on and command it, “Alexa, pair” to put it into pairing mode.
- While within the Bluetooth range of your Echo device, enable Bluetooth in your smartphone and go to the Bluetooth settings. You should see all devices available for pairing.
- Locate the Alexa speaker and click on it to initiate a connection. Once your phone and Alexa pair successfully, your Alexa should announce it has paired with your phone.
2. Pair Via Alexa App
Connecting your phone and Alexa via Alexa app is also straightforward. Here are the steps to follow:
- Launch the Alexa app on your smartphone and select ‘Devices’ and then ‘Echo & Alexa’ to display your Alexa-enabled devices.
- Tap your Echo device from the list to open its settings.
On the setting page, locate and select ‘Pair Alexa Gadget.’ This will put your Alexa into pairing mode.
- Turn on the Bluetooth of your phone and go to the Bluetooth settings.
- From the list of available Bluetooth devices, find your Alexa device and click on it to initiate pairing.
- When the phone and Alexa connect successfully, Alexa will announce it has been paired.
- Once your phone and Alexa are paired, you can play your favorite music on SoundCloud app, which will play through the Alexa speaker.
Important: Your calls will play through your Alexa device when you are using it to play SoundCloud. To keep your conversation private, always disconnect Bluetooth when making calls.
To disconnect Bluetooth, command your Alexa to disconnect by saying, “Alexa, disconnect from [device name].” Pairing is a one-time thing, and you can always connect again by saying, “Alexa, connect to [device name].”
Playing SoundCloud on Alexa from a Computer
To stream SoundCloud on Alexa from a laptop or computer, you only need to connect your Alexa and computer through Bluetooth. Here are the steps to link your PC or laptop to your Alexa device.
Open your computer ‘Settings’ (or ‘Preferences’ for macOS) and navigate to find Bluetooth, then toggle to turn the Bluetooth on.
- On your computer, go to alexa.amazon.com and log in to your Amazon account. Alternatively, you can download the Alexa app for Windows and log in.
- Next, go the ‘Settings’ and click on your Eco device from the list to open its settings.
- On the Echo device settings page, select ‘Bluetooth’ and then click on ‘Pair a New Device.’ This will display a list of available Bluetooth devices.
- Select the name of your computer or laptop to initiate pairing. You will be prompted to allow pairing. Click on ‘Allow’ or equivalent to establish a connection.
Once your computer and Alexa device pair successfully, you can play your favorite songs from SoundCloud on your Echo speakers. After pairing, you can quickly establish a connection by commanding your Alexa, “Alexa, connect to [computer’s name].”
Create an Alexa Skill
While connection through Bluetooth allows you to play SoundCloud on Alexa, it doesn’t offer a hands-free experience. To be able to use Alexa’s voice commands to control SoundCloud, you will need to create a custom skill. Although a little bit tricky and complex, it will deliver the desirable hands-free experience.
To create an Alexa skill, you will need an Amazon Developer account and, of course, knowledge of how the Amazon Developer Console works. Interestingly, you don’t have to code from scratch. You can use available templates to easily set custom skills.
The easiest template to work with is the Magic Jukebox. You can visit the Alexa-SoundCloud repository on GitHub to find your preferred template. When set up correctly, custom skill works like other compatible music streaming platforms. However, your developer account should have the same logins as your Alexa account for you to deploy the custom skill to your Echo devices.
Conclusion
SoundCloud is a unique music service in terms of the library it offers. While there’s no official SoundCloud integration for Alexa, it is possible to work around the existing limitations and stream SoundCloud content to your Echo speakers. If you have programming skills, you can even get to enjoy a hands-free streaming experience by creating an Alexa skill.
