I’ve been on a modest home automation quest over the last year. Due to their relative low cost and decent voice recognition, I have a small squad of Amazon Echo devices placed strategically around the house for automation tasks as well as music and podcast playback.

I’ve used a paid Spotify Family account for some time so that Kaylin and I can have our own libraries and algorithmic recommendations.

Before setting up the new Echos, I made a new Spotify account and registered it to Device Lang. Using the iOS companion app I signed the new Echos in to this Spotify account. The new account keeps random song requests from poisoning either of our recommendation queues. So far, it’s worked flawlessly.

Recently, we’ve been singing Finnegan to sleep at night aided by the Echo in our room. It’s become clumsy to verbally request a few specific songs every night. I figured I could make a playlist on the Device Lang account but quickly realized I did not want to log in to manage just one playlist.

Instead, I created a playlist in my own Spotify account titled “Goodnight Finnegan”. I then logged in and followed that playlist from Device Lang. This lets me quickly update the playlist from any device using my personal Spotify account and allows Device Lang on the Echo’s easy access.

Now, I can just say, “Alexa, play Goodnight Finnegan” and “Alexa, next” to start and navigate our new bedtime ritual.