Deezer playlists with Amazon Alexa

We don't work that way @Peter Stocks but feel free to reach out to our Customer Care team about your account and payments.

Hey @Camo sorry you feel that way!

It isn't true, our teams have been working with Amazon on a new skill (from scratch) and that will hopefully solve our problems. But we haven't had a release date yet.

It's sad to see you go so I'll pass on the feedback 

I just subscribed to Deezer after reading that it is compatible with Amazon Alexa, but I can’t play my personal playlist.  Playing my personal playlist has represented about 90% of my smart speaker usage. Can I get my money back?  Deezer is nearly useless to me if I can’t play playlists.

Hey @Kev B 

Thanks for the feedback, please see the info above.

If you wish to discuss your account's payment, please reach out to our support:

And again 4 months have passed.

Where is the new Alexa-skill that can handle playlists? Where is the beta-version? When is the release date?

Well, I know that's not very polite or patient but anyway, we already got three years of procrastination for a mandatory functionality that every other streaming provider offers.

Procrastination is a bit harsh, I must say @Camo - especially because you haven't see the work done behind the scenes. But as a user I totally understand how you feel.

When the feature is part of our app, things move quicker, generally. But when it's part of a 3rd party integration, there are other factors that determine our development work. Also, like in any other tech company, every feature development is part of a prioritisation exercise at the top here at Deezer. In sum, all I can ask you is for a bit more patience. At the moment our teams are working on reducing bugs drastically and as soon as we're in a better position on this, we'll go back to what we were working on before 

I, too, am on a trial period with Deezer and use my Amazon Echo Studios as my primary speakers. Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Spotify all permit playing one’s own playlist. Tidal does not, and Qobuz doesn’t work at all on my Echo Studios.

Amazon Music HD sounds fantastic and its catalog is exhaustive, but Alexa Cast is buggy and Amazon Music in general is unreliable, frequently stopping the music play, sometimes (oftentimes) after the first song. So I support Deezer getting this right before releasing it. But yes, three years is a long time for this project.

Spotify Connect is the gold standard in my opinion, it makes using the Echo Studios a real pleasure. But so far I prefer Deezer for the sound quality (which exceeds Spotify’s IMO), the user interface (including a pleasant color palette and layout), the song catcher feature, the smooth music play, and the overall feel of the app. Spotify’s pending hi-fi may close the gap for me, especially given their noticeably larger catalog, but I want to love Deezer.

Apple has no casting feature, but playing my playlists is a big plus, and their sound quality has improved with the lossless, Dolby Atmos, et al. upgrades. They seem to have every song imaginable.

Tidal sounds great, but even with my excellent wi-fi, it has buffering issues. And Tidal connect does not work with Echo, and no personal playlists through Alexa. It does help that they name the daily playlists by number, “My Mix 2”, which makes it easy for Alexa to recognize and play them. Deezer’s use of “daily” for all of their daily mixes means I cannot listen to them through Alexa (unless I am missing something?).  So re-naming those or implementing a connect feature would be huge.

All said, Deezer has an opportunity to join the ranks of my streaming services. A Spotify Connect-style feature would cement that, and being able to play the daily playlists and my own playlists would certainly help.

Thank you to whoever is reading and listening.

G

 

Hi there @GropplerZorn 
Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback, it's super useful and well written.

Please check this out:

And bear in mind, I also have good news: our new Alexa skill is almost done - stay tuned to the community!

Again breaking the barriers of community sharing and feedback @GropplerZorn 

I've quoted your comments to our teams, as an example of an important user contribution. I hope we can reduce these shortcomings you mentioned in the near future 

Thank you for sharing your opinion with us!

How close is almost?

I’m on my second trial sub’ with Deezer and I cancelled it last time (two years ago!) because it didn’t work properly with Alexa and it still doesn’t! There are millions of active Amazon Echo devices in the world and the biggest single purpose they’re used for is music streaming and Deezer doesn’t think that’s a priority feature?

It’s not just the fact that I can’t request any personal playlists using Alexa, it’s the fact that when you request Deezer Editor playlists you don’t always get those either, you get some obscure album or band with a name that’s vaguely similar.

You can’t enable Shuffle Mode on any of the available playlists.

If I request my ‘Monday Discovery’ playlist I get what appears to be someone else’s Monday Discovery playlist full of awful stuff I have never listened to.

So it seems you don’t give any priority to music or playlists previously played or favourite-d on each account, you just flail around looking for something with a vaguely similar name and play that? The Deezer app’s are good but Deezer on Alexa is just clueless. Are you ever going to sort this out or do I just switch back to Spotify again?