Play Radio and Amazon Playlist on Alexa Echo Devices

Having an Alexa device in each room, I often use them as a multi-room music system. You can ask them to play something from Amazon Music store or any available Web Radio or you could add a simple Media Player in your wall tablet dashboard to manually switch the Radio station or any Amazon playlist, adjust the volume see the song information and so on.

Requirements

I’ve used three Custom Components, from HACS store:

Integration:

• Alexa Media Player (link). Integrate your Alexa Echo with Home Assistant.

Frontend:

• Mini Media Player (link). Customizable media player card for Home Assistant.
• Browser_mod (link) – Optional, open the Media Player Card as a pop up

Please refer to the installation guide for each custom components, they are all well documented.

The music I want to play is from my Amazon Music Play list and Live Streaming Radios. So of course I’ve created two Playlist on my Amazon Music account and I’ve used Tune In for Radio streaming, both are free for this usage.

Coding

I’ve implemented the Alexa Mini Media Player card inside a pop up, but obviously you could decide to use it directly into your Dashboard without the popup. (Browser_mod add-on is not require if you wont the popup and you could use the custom:mini-media-player card)

Let’s start:

• choose the device to play the music selecting one of your Alexa media Player entity, media_player.alexa_cucina in my example case.
• add the custom tap_action to a standard Button so it pops up the Alexa Mini Media Player card
• add shortcuts option to add a button for each Radio or Amazon Music Playlist. Set the id using:
  • the Radio name, navigate to Tune In home page (link) and find out the radio station you want to include (just copy the name comes out on top once playing)
  • the Playlist name, according to your Amazon Music account

To multi-cast the music among all your Echos and not in a unique device, just create a Group on your Alexa App including all the Echos.

                  - type: button
                    show_name: true
                    show_icon: true
                    show_state: false
                    entity: media_player.alexa_cucina
                    icon: mdi:music
                    name: Music & Radio
                    tap_action:
                      action: fire-dom-event
                      browser_mod:
                        command: popup
                        deviceID: this
                        title: Music & Radio
                        hide_header: false
                        card:
                          type: custom:mini-media-player
                          name: Music & Radio
                          entity: media_player.alexa_cucina
                          artwork: material
                          hide:
                            power_state: false
                            source: true
                            name: true
                            icon: true
                            runtime: false
                          shortcuts:
                            hide_when_off: true
                            columns: 3
                            buttons:
                              - name: RDS
                                type: TUNEIN
                                id: RDS Radio
                                icon: mdi:radio-tower
                              - name: RTL
                                type: TUNEIN
                                id: RTL 102.5
                                icon: mdi:radio-tower
                              - name: Virgin Italy
                                type: TUNEIN
                                id: Virgin Radio Italy
                                icon: mdi:radio-tower
                              - name: Monte Carlo
                                type: TUNEIN
                                id: Radio Monte Carlo
                                icon: mdi:radio-tower
                              - name: 105
                                type: TUNEIN
                                id: Radio 105
                                icon: mdi:radio-tower
                              - name: Deejay
                                type: TUNEIN
                                id: Radio Deejay
                                icon: mdi:radio-tower
                              - name: Playlist Ale
                                type: AMAZON_MUSIC
                                id: Playlist Ale
                                image: /local/images/custom_ui/ico_amazon.png
                              - name: Playlist Marti
                                type: AMAZON_MUSIC
                                id: Playlist Marti
                                image: /local/images/custom_ui/ico_amazon.png
                          info: scroll
                          group: false