Support for Alexa Media Player

[dm7500]

Trying to play music from Spotify to my Alexa devices, which are set as media devices using Alexa Media Player. Alexa gives an error stating that the proper service calls must be made.

If this could be integrated in some way, it would be a game changer for playing music via HA. Happy to test anything as needed.

[marcelveldt]

I've inspected this today and so far I see no easy way to make that work. The Alexa Media Player does not allow to just send a stream URL to play which is what this integration needs. The only way to make this work properly is if somebody creates a custom Alexa skill that communicates with this integration.

I do not own a Alexa device so I can't do that.

A little googleing I just did quickly led me to several 3rd party solutions you could use to turn the Echo device into a unpnp receiver or squeezebox player. For example: https://www.amazon.com/ComputeQ-UG-Haftungsbeschr-Roomskills-Squeezebox/dp/B0983C2377

I'm happy to work with somebody to make this work but without an actual Alexa/Echo device to test with, this is not something I can start with alone

[adocampo]

I would gladly help, I'm not a developer, but I would help by testing it on my echos, unfortunately I'm located in Spain and the skill you pointed can be only installable on US echos (perhaps on DE as well, as per language selection)

[mabrochu-helpox]

I don't know how the SpotCast integration works but I'm able to play music from spotify on my alexa devices from Home Assistant, I don't believe a skill is needed.

[dm7500]

@mabrochu-helpox how do you bring the Alexa's into HA as media players though?

[Creepios]

Please see my comment below (https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/431#discussioncomment-8964417)
for a possible solution!

[mabrochu-helpox]

Whith the alexa integration

[bdr99]

To be clear, this is not the official Alexa integration built into HA. This is a custom integration known as Alexa Media Player. It is found here: https://github.com/custom-components/alexa_media_player

[marcelveldt]

eveloper, but I would help by testing it on my echos, unfortunately I'm located in Spain and the skill you pointed can be only installable on US echos (perhaps on DE as well, as per language selection)

For Music Assistant to work it is required that the enddevice (the speaker) supports "play from url".
So basically we just want to send a url to a speaker. Just like a radio stream....

Music Assistant is not about playing Spotify on a speaker. Music Assistant is about playing all your online en offline media to a collection of speakers. The Spotcast implementation (and others like the alexa custom integration) send Spotify commands to the Echo speaker, not plain urls

[janstadt]

Its hacky but you can send urls like this:

service: notify.alexa_media
data:
  message: <audio src='https://url-to-mp3.mp3' />
  target: media_player.the_kitchen
  data:
    type: tts
  title: Happy Halloween

Probably not the intended use but im curious if there is another api we that could be leveraged ?

[flexage]

Can you please test that with a radio url ? If it keeps playing it is indeed an option to use that for Music Assistant

I also have the notify.alexa_media service from the Alexa Media Player Custom Component (https://github.com/custom-components/alexa_media_player/wiki) available, so I gave this a try.

First, I tried with a couple of MP3's:

service: notify.alexa_media
data:
  message: <audio src='https://kt-montage.com/files/smarthomeyourself/mp3/001.mp3'/>
  data:
    type: tts
  target: media_player.my_echo_dot_name

data:
  message: <audio src='https://www.soundhelix.com/examples/mp3/SoundHelix-Song-1.mp3'/>
  data:
    type: tts
  target: media_player.my_echo_dot_name

The first one played, the second one didn't.

For the one that didn't work, Alexa spoke a message:

“Sorry I'm having trouble connecting to your Simon Says EU skill right now”

I then tried with a couple of internet radio urls, I tried an m3u playlist, and a generated stream url from within the m3u playlist:

service: notify.alexa_media
data:
  message: <audio src='http://pulseedm.cdnstream1.com:8124/1373_128'/>
  data:
    type: tts
  target: media_player.my_echo_dot_name

I received the same message from Alexa:

“Sorry I'm having trouble connecting to your Simon Says EU skill right now”

---

I did some sleuthing on the issue, and turned up the following related Amazon Developer Doc:

https://developer.amazon.com/en-GB/docs/alexa/custom-skills/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference.html#audio

They say that when sending playback requests using TTS and the inline tag as above, that certain limitations around sample rates, bitrates, and runtime are imposed (copied from docs and bolded the critical blocking requirements):

• The MP3 must be hosted at an Internet-accessible HTTPS endpoint. HTTPS is required, and the domain hosting the MP3 file must present a valid, trusted SSL certificate. Self-signed certificates cannot be used.
• The MP3 must not contain any customer-specific or other sensitive information.
• The MP3 must be a valid MP3 file (MPEG version 2).
• For your speech response, the audio file cannot be longer than 240 seconds.
• The combined total time for all audio files in the outputSpeech property of the response cannot be more than 240 seconds.
• The combined total time for all audio files in the reprompt property of the response cannot be more than 90 seconds.
• The bit rate must be 48 kbps. Note that this bit rate gives a good result when used with spoken content, but is generally not a high enough quality for music.
• The sample rate must be 22050Hz, 24000Hz, or 16000Hz.
• You may need to use converter software to convert your MP3 files to the required codec version (MPEG version 2) and bit rate (48 kbps).

[marcelveldt]

ah OK so that is NOT useable ;-)

[marcelveldt]

Thanks for the extensive testing!

[flexage]

No problem, happy I could help!

[Bachigaloupe]

Yes, thanks for this testing as I too have gigs of mp3 files and several echos. Willing to test beta solutions. I don't think I can offer as much help as others but I am in the US and I see that can make a difference to Amazon

[flexage]

Enjoyed the Open Home Audio stream with you all! Very impressive stuff all around!

@marcelveldt Music Assistant seems great, and opens a world of possibilities!

I just wanted to offer up a potential path forward for supporting Echo devices, and that would be using them as a bluetooth audio target.

I regularly pair my Echo with my Macbook via bluetooth, and set it as my output device.

No special hardware of configuration needed, just the Amazon Alexa app:
Devices -> Echo & Alexa -> Select Device -> Bluetooth Connections -> Connect a Device

The simplest solution is to pair your Echo(s) with the host OS, and use them as system output device(s) - of course, that may incur limitations regarding targeting specific connected devices/groups
(or it may not... I can't purport myself to be an expert on linux audio, perhaps @pvizeli [Pascal] is better suited to answer that).

Traditionally, Bluetooth radios have supported a single audio streaming device per chip (except for a few specialist radios) - so 1 dongle = 1 speaker, 2 dongles = 2 speakers, etc....

However, the recent Bluetooth LE specification also adds "multi device audio streaming" from a single radio, I believe using the LC3 codec.

Here's some reference links:

https://embeddedcomputing.com/application/networking-5g/short-range-wireless-pan/le-audio-the-next-generation-of-bluetooth-audio-technology

https://www.bluetooth.com/learn-about-bluetooth/recent-enhancements/le-audio/

Note: It would not be the best solution in terms of making direct use of the PCM stream url you described in the video presentation, and it may not support the speaker latency/sync feature you have planned for the future - however, it is an option that maintains local-control, and I do not believe invokes the cloud once configured.

For that, I believe the only current 'official' option to request Alexa devices to play an url is using their custom skill API- and that of course requires an internet accessible url, so goes against the local-control philosophy, so is less than ideal - However Nabu Casa already provides a Home Assistant custom skill for Alexa, so I'd imagine some of the groundwork is already laid...

The relevant documentation appears to be available here: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/custom-skills/audioplayer-interface-reference.html#audio-stream-requirements

[marcelveldt]

Bluetooth could be a possible solution although I have no idea if that is 100% reliable. Just look for a HA integration for a Bluetooth media player. Another option is to use an intermediate ESP32 running the squeezelite firmware that outputs its audio to bluetooth.

1. ESP32 with PSRam
2. Install squeezelite on it: https://github.com/sle118/squeezelite-esp32
3. Activate the SLIMproto integration in HA (it will auto detect the squeezelite player(s))
4. Add the slimproto media_player to MA

[flexage]

Another option is to use an intermediate ESP32 running the squeezelite firmware that outputs its audio to bluetooth.

This is actually very sensible thinking, for a few reasons:

• Probably a smaller barrier to ingress for non-technical users than configuring Home Assistant OS (the HA supported project for flashing ESP firmware makes it a breeze)
• Makes use of the existing HA SLIMProto integration (like you say)
• Requires no code changes to MA?
• Very "on-brand" with the Audio in the Open Home presentation

Sounds like everything code and hardware related is already in place, so all that was needed was the concept and testing?

[marcelveldt]

Correct, in theory that should work and it just needs someone willing to test it.
Just make sure you have an ESP32 Wrover module (with PSRAM)

[OzGav]

@flexage Out of interest did you ever have a go at setting this up? Or any other BT connection?

[flexage]

Additional: I came across an article from last year on Mark Lewis's Blog, in which he configures audio with a bluetooth dongle on Home Assistant OS, seemed fairly simple: https://marklewis.blog/2021/02/25/home-assistant-bluetooth-speaker/

Mark was using a "Local VLC" community addon as a player, but I'm sure there's other things that can be done

[gromgsxr]

would we possibly be able to use something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoCPUypkimc&ab_channel=DabbleLab as a base for a custom skill to be able to play media from a url on amazon devices?

[marcelveldt]

Correct, that is what Amazon invented to do this.

[gromgsxr]

Is there a specific output URL from music assistant or homeassistant that I could point that skill kit at to see if it works? My ha is accessable via https so I would have thought the skill could play from a URL then.

Edit I pulled a generic web radio stream off the internet and built that template pointing at the URL for the radio station called it 'music assistant' I was able to get it to play the stream all good. I am also able to use the custom component 'alexa media player' to run a custom command 'open music assistant' and the stream started playing. so if I had a URL from music assistant that streams the music out of my home assistant that I could point the skill kit at I would assume I could them play music on my Alexa devices possibly.

[marcelveldt]

Music Assistant generates unique stream URL's on the fly for each playback session but if you can actually play some URL the foundation is there to make it work. Now you can go a few steps further and listen to the audio quality, is it good (enough) ? And perhaps test a few different file formats like mp3 and flac. If all that works it passed the test and there's only one issue left:

The streamservice in MA is only available on the local network on a dedicated network port. So you will need some sort of proxy that temporary opens up for the external stream request. My advice would be to fork the existing Alexa Media Player integration and override the method "play_media" in the media_player implementation. that will receive the stream URL from MA and you can add your own logic there.

[gromgsxr]

Above my skill level. Shame oh well

[erkr]

Moved to discussions, raise your votes!

[gromgsxr]

Gets my vote I'm happy to try and help if I can with testing ect.

[imduffy15]

I think we would need to create a music provider following https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/music-skills/understand-the-music-skill-api.html and then hook into that via alexa_media_player through alexapys play_music function https://alexapy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/alexapy/alexapy.html#alexapy.AlexaAPI.play_music

[realroywalker]

No further update to the above, just waiting on the service call to be added into the Music Assistant code at the moment. I spoke with @marcelveldt on discord recently and he's understandably busy with work, life and other MA updates at the moment. But it's on his radar to do when he has time 😁
Once that change is in we should hopefully be most of the way there (assuming it works as intended)

[kingunlim]

thx for your update on this topic, that sounds very promissing 😬
if you guys manage this, that would be a milestone in terms of missing features!
i hope everything will work how you guys intend it! thx for all of your works!

[proffalken]

Also willing to volunteer my echos to test this - I've got the following:

• Original Echo
• Echo Dot
• Echo Flex
• Echo Dot Kids

Let me know if I can help!

[janstadt]

Curious if there has been any progress on this or if there is a targeted release that might provide this functionality? TIA!

[OzGav]

I haven’t heard any talk about this for a while so I assume little to no progress at this time. Maybe someone will,pick it up after the next release (due this month)

[zepheris]

Not a coder, just a dabler.
I found this which may help with creating a custom skill
https://github.com/dabblelab/3-alexa-audio-streaming-example-skill
This is the video that helps add the skill to your Alexa development console
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoCPUypkimc

From what I understand. Activating this skill will have the backend load up an audio stream. The URL in this stream could be changed to point to your home assistant instance (or I believe nabu casa URL) for the .m3u file. If it's possible to code an audio stream, then we could use this skill.

The scenario would be to have the audio stream process start when opening the media player
Person says the invocation phrase (which you can set to whatever you want) "Alexa, open home streaming"
Alexa connects to your home assistant instance
You play some music and it's streamed to Alexa.

If this is achievable, then we could adapt the stream URL to other players. Using a m3u app on your phone to stream is one example that comes to mind.

Edit:
I just noticed that this scenario appears to have already been suggested :)

[phirestalker]

Any more progress on using the Alexa Media Player integration in conjunction with this?

[neil1111]

Here's a link https://discord.gg/AekbrwbY

…

________________________________ From: BT643 ***@***.***> Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2025 12:15:46 PM To: music-assistant/support ***@***.***> Cc: neil1111 ***@***.***>; Comment ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [music-assistant/support] Support for Alexa Media Player (Discussion #431) Sorry to post this here, but does anyone have a link to the Discord server for this? Interested in seeing if there's anything I could do to help. Would love this working on Alexa. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#431 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AG4HWX7VAD36HV5FYI3SZXT2W22KFAVCNFSM5ZFEEO42U5DIOJSWCZC7NNSXTOSENFZWG5LTONUW63SDN5WW2ZLOOQ5TCMRWGYZTAMRR>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Benniepie]

Hello - I'd like to contribute to this if I can - however invite to discord has expired

[OzGav]

https://www.music-assistant.io/support/

[OzGav]

2.6.0 BETA 13 has been released with experimental support for ALEXA. See how you go with it. Instructions here https://beta.music-assistant.io/player-support/alexa/

[kingp0dd]

That was quick! Reading now

[ColtonYYZ]

Is there a guide that someone could recommend on how to setup the proxy with SSL Certificates listed in Step 2? I know nothing about those 2 things. I have tried setting up a SSL certificate for the domain I pay for, but I can't figure how to do it.

I am using Windows 11 for my media server. And I use Debian + Supervised setup for Hass. (Yes I know I need to change over to HAOS, I am procrastinating)

2. Set Up a Proxy with SSL Certificates
Configure a reverse proxy (such as Nginx or Caddy) in front of both the API bridge (default port: 3000) and your Music Assistant streaming port (default port: 8097)
Obtain and install valid SSL certificates (e.g. using Let's Encrypt) for your domain(s)
Ensure both the API bridge and Music Assistant streaming endpoints are accessible via HTTPS, as Alexa requires secure endpoints

[DerGary]

Well that fastly depends on the individual setup so such a guide is not that helpful in that documentation as there are already a lot of guides depending on the used software out there. I am personally using traefik with their built in let's encrypt support that automatically creates certificates using let's encrypt. But I heard caddy should be easy to use too. Basically you have to install a reverse proxy like traefik oder caddy, and configure the 443 port with a unique subdomain to the ports of music assistant streaming port and to the Alex API container and make that 443 port publicly available. Configure the reverse proxy to obtain certificates for these domains automatically and you should be good to go

[ColtonYYZ]

@DerGary, are you available on Discord? I use the same username there as here... would you have a couple mins to answer a few more questions? One more problem I ran into is that I installed the MA API using Terminal in Hass but I am getting that message about running containers outside of Hass is not allowed. Because I am using Debian + Supervised Hass, I might have to upgrade to HAOS and maybe it's best I do it now rather than some time in the future. Would you agree? Or can I get this setup without having to upgrade just yet?

[gromgsxr]

I got the docker image deployed, built the skill and edited the endpoints have the reverse proxy set up with 2 different sud domains one for the API server and one for the streaming endpoint. Went through the config flow and authorised to log in. But after that nothing no players show up or anything. I'm using amazon.co.uk as the end point

[alams154]

The "route /alexa/auth/proxy/ already registered" is a bug with the current release. I have fixed it in the linked draft but it might be a while until it's included in a beta release. If you are able to pull the draft branch, it should fix the issue. Otherwise, restarting your instance might help.

<MusicAssistant_IP>/alexa/auth/proxy/ would be the correct address for the Amazon login page so your redirection looks right to me but I am not sure why it would not work.

You should see something like this after being redirected:

[RoMaTiX99]

Ah okay, good to know. Probably need to wait for a new beta release.

Just to be sure about the forwarding... I just restarted the MA Service and was able to add Alexa Player again (so not "Route already registered" error). BUT the forwarding still isn't working. I just checked, and it forwards to
https://public-url-of-homeassistant.com/api/hassio_ingress/eCRSvXrTzFsN7V95qby1DXqcuULyMVxG9FJ6znln8Nw/alexa/auth/proxy/

Is this the way it should be forwarded? It shows me a 404 (not found)

[alams154]

The last part "/alexa/auth/proxy" looks right but I never tested the redirection as an addon in Home Assistant. When I was developing and testing, I was using the repo directly so maybe there's some conflict with how Home Assistant handles the redirect. Maybe using the standalone container might fix it?

I'll try to replicate the issue by installing the addon and see if I can find a fix.

[alams154]

Was able to replicate it. Now to see why it won't work...

This means the current release will not work as a Home Assistant Add-on.

[alams154]

I am not sure if this workaround will work in the current release but it works in my draft branch:

EXPOSE MA WEB SERVER

1. MA -> Settings
2. Settings -> Core Modules
3. Core Modules -> Web Server
4. Expose the port and save

LOGIN PROCESS (must be completed from HA_IP:8095)

• Requires Amazon account credentials (email and password)
• Requires one factor authentication code generation for your Amazon account

1. Fill in required info (email and password) on config screen
2. Press Authenticate with Amazon button
3. Click Sign In radio button and then the big blue Sign In button after filling in credentials (this will fail)
4. Close that tab and click "Click here if the popup didn't open"
5. Proceed with signing in on the Amazon login page

You should at least be able to see the devices but the API and other things may or may not work.

[reryro]

Just passively following the thread so far, but I already know -- we don't pay you enough, Sameer! ;-)

…

On Jun 25, 2025 at 8:11 AM, Sameer Alam ***@***.***> wrote: Was able to replicate it. Now to see why it won't work... This means the current release will not work as a Home Assistant Add-on. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[d1egoaz]

I got the new beta and Alexa API running, and now MA sees the Alexa speakers. However, when I try to play music, it keeps going back to a previous Spotify playlist, the one I originally started by asking Alexa directly.

I've restarted Alexa and tried playing something else through MA, but it still defaults to that earlier Spotify playlist, even though it wasn't initially started from MA.

[Benniepie]

I wonder if the stream server IP is set to the external rather than internal IP? E.g. should be IP 192.168.42.2 and your stream port ...is it still 8097? In stream server settings
Assuming your external IP is proxying the connection to the internal IP & port 8097 then the stream server IP would need to be your internal IP and port. Mine went wrong at this point because my stream port had incremented to 8098. And the IP & port must match the incoming connection - symptom if it doesn't is the silent Alexa and the "Unhandled GET request to /flow" etc....

[Argeath]

"Received unhandled GET request..." means your reverse proxy redirects /flow/... request to http port instead of stream port.
I had to split routes /flow to 8097 and / to 8095

[d1egoaz]

@Argeath Thanks, that helped a lot.

I changed my proxy to use port 8097 instead of 8095, and now I can test the skill, which plays in my browser.

I missed this part of the instructions as I wan't familiar with MA internals Music Assistant streaming port

Configure a reverse proxy (such as Nginx or Caddy) in front of both the API bridge (default port: 3000) and your Music Assistant streaming port (default port: 8097)

@alams154

This error is very strange. Everything looks like it is communicating properly MA -(sends stream URL to API)-> API -(is read from by Skill)-> Skill -(attempts to play MA stream)-> MA. I don't know why MA would say the GET request is unhandled when it's the one that set up the stream URL. There isn't any authentication between MA and the Skill so I'm not sure what else could cause this issue.

I believe I made an error on my previous understanding of how things were wroking. The only way for me to trigger a call to /ma/latest-url right now is by testing the Skill on the console. When I'm on Music Assistant and play a song on an Echo device, it calls /ma/push-url, and then, for some reason, the Echo device starts playing the song that was previously played on Spotify, but the lamba never calls /ma/latest-url

[d1egoaz]

OMG, it's working now!

I had the Echo Dot device configured in two languages, Spanish/English. When I changed the device to use the same language as the skill, English (US), it started working. 🎉

It also works for English/Spanish, but not for Spanish/English!

Great work, @alams154!

[alams154]

Now we gotta hope that Amazon doesn't kill the APIs the provider uses.

Amazon has this page up for their Skill Enablement REST API Reference saying it's temporarily unavailable but it's different from the one that broke the Alexa Media Player integration for Home Assistant which is https://alexa.amazon.com/api/phoenix. Hopefully, it's truly under maintenance and not deprecated.

[gromgsxr]

➜ curl <https://my public domain name for alexa api>/ma/latest-url
{"error":"No URL available"}⏎

from this i get back "streamUrl":"http://192.168.0.14:8097/flow/zkETv3h8/Kitchen/0972756348da4fe892c31feb3d692ae0.flac"

[alams154]

What does it show when you navigate here:
https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/console/ask/settings/access-management

I think you should see something like this:

I have been playing around with skills for a long time so I might have forgot that setting had to be documented.

[gromgsxr]

I have nuked the skill and am going to try and start again I wonder if it's a English us Vs UK thing. Do you have to always 'ask music assistant to play audio' or can I click play on the ma website and it will start playing

[alams154]

You shouldn’t need to ask but the play on MA website is essentially running the ‘ask music assistant to play audio’ in the background. Same with when you skip a track which may or may not work.

[gromgsxr]

ok looks like its all an english us/uk thing, i rebuilt the skill adding english uk as a second language then had to copy over the custom play audio intents, then i could get 'ask music assistant to play audio' on a echo and get sound but still will not play directly from ma.

2025-06-25 22:07:17.658 WARNING (MainThread) [alexapy.alexalogin] Domain amazon.com does not match reported account domain amazon.co.uk; functionality is not likely to work, please fix so looks like ita moaning that i signed in to .com and should be .co.uk

so tried logging in to .co.uk but no go

2025-06-25 22:14:13.883 ERROR (MainThread) [music_assistant] Error doing task: Unclosed connection 2025-06-25 22:14:14.409 WARNING (MainThread) [alexapy.helpers] alexaapi.get_devices((<alexapy.alexalogin.AlexaLogin object at 0x7fa65bcc3c50>,), {}): An error occurred accessing AlexaAPI: An exception of type AlexapyLoginError occurred. Arguments: ('Login error detected; not contacting API',) 2025-06-25 22:14:14.410 ERROR (MainThread) [music_assistant] Error doing task: Task exception was never retrieved Traceback (most recent call last): File "/app/venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/music_assistant/providers/alexa/__init__.py", line 244, in loaded_in_mass devices = await AlexaAPI.get_devices(self.login) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/app/venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/alexapy/helpers.py", line 138, in wrapper return await func(*args, **kwargs) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/app/venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/alexapy/alexaapi.py", line 1269, in get_devices response = await AlexaAPI._static_request( ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "get", login, "/api/devices-v2/device", query=None ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ) ^ File "/app/venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/backoff/_async.py", line 151, in retry ret = await target(*args, **kwargs) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/app/venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/alexapy/alexaapi.py", line 341, in _static_request raise AlexapyLoginError("Login error detected; not contacting API") alexapy.errors.AlexapyLoginError: Login error detected; not contacting API

[Benniepie]

ok so in the developer console if i "ask music assistant to play audio" and there is music currently playing in a quew i get music out of my browser. but if i ask an alexa device "ask music assistant to play audio" she answers back "I'm not quite sure how to help you with that"

"I'm not sure how to help you with that" means your invocation name "music assistant" is not configured in the custom skill (for UK region)

[alams154]

Also there is another bug with skipping a song in the playlist where the audio stops playing. Maybe some sort of caching issue.

I haven't had time to debug it yet but just a heads up for anyone who is able to get it running.

[alams154]

@DerGary Moving the conversation here just in case anyone finds this useful in debugging. The /verify URL is not registered and I can add that to the registered routes which should fix the 404 error you are seeing. Do you know what HTTP method is being called on that URL?

The first try 404 should be fixed on my draft branch.

Are you using a domain other than amazon.com? I never got the /verify URL while I was developing so it would be nice to know where the sub-URL is coming from.

[DerGary]

do you have anything in place that redirects port 80 to your music assistant server port?

[DerGary]

I now added the port also the the callback url in the auth.py file and now I can succesfully login in and it shows me my alexa devices.

The changes I made are here:

alams154/music-assistant_server@0330a7f

Proof that it works now:

have not tested the playback yet, will do this soon.

[alams154]

It's good that you got it working but I believe there is something we are doing that is incorrect in the URLs. When I pull your changes for the add-port, I get the following error when trying to authenticate (this is why I didn't integrate it into the dev branch):

This is my default webserver settings:

Did you change your webserver settings?

I also think we shouldn't be changing the auth file since it might break the other providers that rely on auth.

Let me know what you think and the best way to proceed.

[alams154]

There was something with pathlib that the Apple Music provider uses that I wanted to test out so hopefully that solves all of our issues.

Update: It will not fix any issues.

[DerGary]

well when the base url should contain the port than that explains why it works on your end but not on mine. I don't remember changing that but it does not contain the port on my setup. I tested it now with your latest branch and with the port in the base url and that works for me. I was able to play music on my alexa device with it.

[gromgsxr]

Was there any thoughts on problems with different Amazon regions eg amazon.co.uk?

[alams154]

I don't have any ideas at the moment but it looks like there is a way to use amazon.com even if your account is a different region but I am not sure on the process. I don't think I will be able to fix any issues with a different region anytime soon though without someone with more experience in handling the Alexa API and how it works with different regions.

[Benniepie]

Hello, I've been following this thread, and hit a brick wall with my set-up until I downloaded the latest build. I'm in the UK and my Alexa devices are all set up on amazon.co.uk. Here's the what I did:

• Authenticated via IP:8095 music assistant web server address after exposing the web-server port (pre-filled in my domain amazon.co.uk username and password)

• Quickly stepped through the authentication before it timed-out

• Once I'd got the "Login successful! You may now close this window." I returned to Music Assistant - I think I had to change my Amazon domain back to "amazon.co.uk" from "amazon.com" - it appeared to have reverted to default following authentication - clicked save - the players then loaded

• Attempting to play a track through an Alexa device resulted in a confused "I don't know how to help you with that" from Alexa - this was where I realised that I hadn't set an invocation name for the skill in the UK region - so I went and set the invocation name to "music assistant" in all of the regions & saved and then rebuilt the skill.

• Next problem was silence from Alexa - this was caused by my stream port changing from 8097 to 8098 following a restart of Music Assistant addon - I changed this back to 8097 and it worked.

In terms of external ports - I didn't specify any for either the API or the Stream URL as I proxied the default https port (443) for each one to the internal port (3000 & 8097)

Hope that helps others who may have got stuck at the same points I did - thank you for all the work you guys have put into this - you have no idea how long I have looked forward to this day!

[felixschndr]

Does this mean music-assistant has to be reachable from the Internet in order for this to work?

[alams154]

The stream port 8097 must be reachable from the Internet. The frontend (port 8095) does not.

[kingp0dd]

Does this work after updating to 2025 7 1? AMP stopped working today maybe due to API

…

On Sat, Jul 5, 2025, 7:25 PM Dominik Kinal ***@***.***> wrote: "Received unhandled GET request..." means your reverse proxy redirects /flow/... request to http port instead of stream port. I had to split routes /flow to 8097 and / to 8095 — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#431 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACGD6KX57TL65KB5YEZYPJT3G6YYZAVCNFSM5ZFEEO42U5DIOJSWCZC7NNSXTOSENFZWG5LTONUW63SDN5WW2ZLOOQ5TCMZWGY4DOOJR> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.*** .com>

[alams154]

The problem with AMP is that it uses get_guard_details/get_network_details from alexaapy which uses the Amazon API at https://alexa.amazon.com/api/phoenix. The Amazon API just returns an empty response so the integration will need to be updated to stop its reliance on that API.

Amazon did make Alexa guard paywalled so it might be the reason they brought that specific API down.

The MA provider does not use these calls and is not affected unless Amazon decides to bring all of its APIs down.

[Argeath]

Hey
I'm all set up, authed and so on - with 2.6.0b14.
In amazon dev console in "Test" for "Ask music assistant to play audio" - it reads the TuneIn radio or Spotify (https://MA_HOST/flow/...) and plays the music on my macbook, but it does not work on my Amazon Echo dot gen3 or Amazon Echo. I keep getting that error in CloudWatch:

2025-07-05T17:54:02.666Z	195a8c6e-f997-406a-b033-785212d1ba61	INFO	Playback Failed : 
{
    "message": "Device playback error",
    "type": "MEDIA_ERROR_INVALID_REQUEST"
}

do you know what that could be? or any hint or maybe console.log in lambda to get more detailed error message?

[alams154]

I haven't found a way to make that error message more elaborate. Is your stream internet accessible?

I often see that message when hitting next in MA and I still haven't been able to debug it.

[Argeath]

I figured it out, I'm using cloudflare DNS and for Edge certificates I had minimum TLS 1.3 - but I found somewhere that Alexa uses TLS 1.2. I reduced minimal version and it works now!

[gromgsxr]

do announcements work with this yet?

[alams154]

No, it will probably be a long time until I personally work on announcements.

[x61]

This is very promising. Can someone point me to a clear instructions on how to set this up?

[alams154]

You can run the docker container on any machine as long as you configure it properly. The instructions may be out of date on the page I sent you but I think each repo has up-to-date instructions.

https://github.com/alams154/music-assistant-alexa-skill
https://github.com/alams154/music-assistant-alexa-api

[OzGav]

@alams154 please let me know what changes need to be made to our docs. It is important they remain up to date.

[alams154]

For step 1:
docker run --rm -d -p 3000:3000 -e USERNAME=admin -e PASSWORD=test ghcr.io/alams154/music-assistant-alexa-api:latest

For step 4:

Customize and Build the Skill

1. Go to the Build tab in the Alexa Developer Console.
2. Click the Invocation Name field and type in music assistant and hit save
3. Go to the Code tab and open the index.js file.
4. Change the API_HOSTNAME and MA_HOSTNAME constants to point to your API and Music Assistant instance.
5. Change the API_USERNAME and API_PASSWORD constants regarding the basic auth settings of the alexa api container or your reverse proxy.
6. Click Deploy to deploy the skill
7. Go to the Test and enable skill testing in Development
8. Go to the Build tab and build the skill

[reryro]

Dumb question here... Am I reading the command limitations correctly -- you can't actually initiate music from the Alexa device, right? Such as, "Alexa play [song] by [artist]" and have it play the request from your local library? As I read it, you have to start a stream on your MA instance first and then Alexa can be commanded to play that stream -- is that how this works?

[alams154]

Yep, if you are looking for Alexa to be the primary controller, you might want to look into something like Jellyfin (might not be maintained/updated):
https://github.com/infinityofspace/jellyfin_alexa_skill

Any features on the skill/Alexa side of the control will probably be in the way future.