Of all of the smart home devices out there, Amazon’s Echo is probably one of the better known at this point. This is no doubt because it comes with Alexa.
Alexa has been immortalised, not only by its own abilities, but also by pop culture. There are probably thousands of comedy sketches out there where the entire punchline is set up by an Alexa misunderstanding a request.
Generally though, these sketches have given Alexa a bad name. For the most part, this tech has served us well over the last few years and become a permanent fixture in millions of homes. It’s always played the tunes that we wanted to listen to and been able to source them from a whole host of popular streaming services without any hassle.
However, this has not been the case recently. For whatever reasons (though we have a theory on this that we’ll get to at the end), a massive amount of you are struggling to get Alexa to play music from your library.
Why Alexa Can’t Find Music In My Library
This is supposed to be some very simple tech that was working perfectly fine for a period of years. It’s somewhat maddening that it would cease to do so after so long. So, first, we are going to take a look at a few practical reasons why it may not be working as it should.
For many of you, these will work. However, die to the unusual nature of the issue, we cannot guarantee that it will work in every eventuality. Right, so with that having been addressed, let’s get stuck into it!
1. Try vocalising the name of your library/playlist
The first thing that we would recommend trying isn’t much of a ‘fix’ per se. It is best considered as a change in tactics. Basically, we will be asking for the same thing, but in a different way. Try mentioning the actual name of your library or playlist as you make your request.
Of course, you should also mention the name of the song you are trying to play too. On occasion, when you are trying to play a song from My Music using Alexa, it may struggle to recognise it properly.
This is our first guess as to what is happening. To exclude this as a probable cause, we would first suggest that you name your playlist or library something definite. After that, you can simply give the command. “Alexa, play *song name* from *library/playlist name*.
After that, Alexa should easily be able to understand what you mean and locate the source of the music you want. As an afterthought to this point, it does also seem that Alexa gets confused if the song title goes on for ages. If it does, we would recommend just saying a portion of the track name.
2. Ensure that your account is linked to your current location
Another relatively common cause of these problems is this. For whatever reason, quite a few people have managed to accidentally link their Amazon accounts to a location that has nothing to do with them.
This can cause all sorts of problems – especially if there are other account that it is working in unison with that are tied to different locations. Let’s say for example that your Spotify account is listed as being in Scotland, then you will need make sure that your Amazon account is also based there.
Unfortunately, this can be quite an annoying problem to fix. In fact, in some cases, people have had to change or even create an entirely new account with Amazon.
The Last Word
Above are the only two fixes we have for this at the moment. We are hoping to have more in the future – or better yet, that the problem may just be fixed on their end.
To us, this seems like a particularly strange problem for a previously reliable service to develop. In some cases, it can almost seem that the Amazon music app and Alexa aren’t even remotely synched anymore.
For us, it seems almost as if they are pushing their service to be that little bit worse so that people are pressured into buying into their unlimited music service. Whatever the case, let’s just hope they sort it out soon.
In the meantime, if you have come across any other way of making Alexa work as it once did, please don’t hesitate to share the tip with our readers. Let’s try to save some headaches!
Well in January my year is up. So I will be saving the $119.00 I paid for the year last time but not anymore since they took from me what I was using. It is their ploy to get more people paying for the unlimited music.
Suddenly Alexa won’t play my songs that I have bought individually and stored on my phone. She says shuffling my music, then says can’t find it. But as all my songs, over a 100 are stored on my phone, I can still play them through Alexa 8n the house, or whenever I’m out walking, I can listen on my phone.
This was happening to me as well. A playlist I have been playing for a couple of years suddenly disappeared for Alexa. I changed the playlist name and problem solved.
This worked for me! Thank you!!
how do you change your playlist name and is that done on you iphone or echo?
I only have one playlist that I play all the time, and starting the other day, Alexa says she can’t find that playlist. I looked on Amazon Music and it’s there. However on my husband’s Alexa in the same house, she still plays all of his playlists with no problem.
Another thing that started about a week or two ago – she answers some math problems with “empty group” instead of the answer.
I turned her off and on – didn’t help.
If you have multiple profiles, you need to tell alexa to “switch account”. I have a Playlist and my wife does not. It kept telling me it could not find my Playlist because it was in my wife’s account. Once we switched accounts, I told alexa to play my Playlist and it worked perfectly.
ring a ding ding!!! winner winner!!
this was my problem with a slight difference – I had set my echo for amazon kids (and I feel like it was still working for quite a while) and it was only in my daughter’s profile (which is why I couldn’t find my playlist) and I couldn’t change it back to my account. Turned off the ‘kids’ feature and it was back in my profile and THEN it found my playlist no problem.
Thank you, this fixed my problem.
I don’t have a fix but a workaround. Alexa won’t play my paid music in my library and tells me it’s available in “Unlimited” for a fee. So, instead I start out on the Amazon Music app and select the song or album in my library and hit play. Then I touch the “Cast” icon and select the Alexa device.
Great idea for now, thanks!!
This one worked for me!
Alexa don’t member my favorite music and does not know even the same music artists I loved it before now it is like an argument to try my same favorites I had before??
I am gutted. I have spent over a year compiling my quite extensive play list. Only to be told I now have only one song on there. Also I get told the same as others. ‘A’ doesn’t know this song.
What have I been paying for ???
Alexa is no longer playing song request it will start the song then say it can’t play music from my library ??
Using Alexa to play music has gone *way downhill.
I’ve been using the A lady since it came out and increasingly when I ask to play something from my library it either plays it from Amazon Music or says it can’t find it even though it’s very definitely in my library.
It’s usually specific artists.
Last night it was Red Elvises.
No matter how I phrased it Alexa couldn’t play anything besides what was in Amazon Music from them (which didn’t include what I wanted to hear) even though there’s a lot from them in my library.
It absolutely wouldn’t play anything from Vandaveer so I made a play list of their songs.
THAT plays fine.
SAME PROBLEM. For years I’ve said “play country music” now she said “playing music from a station”. Plays part of the song then says “can’t find library”. I don’t have a library and never did. What has changed?
Same here. Alexa will play one line of a song then can’t find my Library to play the rest of the song. If I ask to play “70’s” music she tells from the rock channel then plays one or part of song then can’t find Library?
Same problem here! Any fixes yet?
Yea this doesn’t work. The device selection seems to also be missing from the Amazon music app. It’s like the Alexa app and the Amazon music app are not even synced anymore and getting it to work by naming each song or album is tedious and pointless when it worked fine before. I’m thinking it’s just another ploy to get us to buy their unlimited music service, but fat chance of that happening now. If anyone finds a fix please share.
Alexa won’t play a playlist that she has always played before no problem, she says there isn’t one called that, but when I look on my prime app it’s there, help please
Did you ever get an answer to fix this? I am having the exact same problem and it’s driving me crazy.
This is the same problem I’m having all of a sudden Alexa can’t find playlist with that name. Can someone help?
I ask Alexa to play songs and she always says she can’t find the song. These are easy songs to find, like isn’t she lovely by Stevie Wonder songs by the Righteous Brothers. Alexa has always been able to find this music before, so I don’t understand what the problem is now
alexa says I am having trouble playing music from your library when I say play music how to fix