Announced earlier today in a press release, Amazon has added multi-room audio playback to all Echo hardware. This means you can synchronize music across multiple Amazon Echo devices in your home. The song you are playing in your kitchen can also be played on the other side of the house in your bedroom.

This functionality is ideal for parties or generally anyone moving all over the house all the time. In addition, Amazon will let you group specific sets of Echos for music playback. If you only wanted to play the speakers downstairs, you would setup an Echo group with all the devices on the first floor.

All of this is integrated into Alexa voice control as well. For instance, you would be able to say something like “Alexa, play Taylor Swift upstairs,” and all the Echo devices upstairs will play all the music Swifties can handle.

At launch, Amazon is currently supporting Amazon Music, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Pandora. Support for Spotify and SiriusXM is in the works and coming soon. Amazon is also working with speaker manufacturers to integrate Alexa into speakers directly to support multi-room audio.

Amazon is the new Budget Multi-Room Audio Leader

With a software update, Amazon just moved into 1st place when it comes to cost. If you don’t have any speakers yet, purchasing a Dot + a speaker is significantly cheaper than going the Sonos route. Here’s an example:

An Echo Dot + a VAUX Cordless Home Speaker (designed for the Echo to drop into) will run you about $90 most of the time. Let’s say you purchase five of these for different rooms in your home. That will run you about $450.

Conversely, if you go with the base model Sonos speaker, the Play:1, that’s going to cost you $199 a speaker. Five speakers will run you roughly $1000, more than twice the price of the Amazon alternative!

However, the true value of the Echo is that it doesn’t force you into a specific, expensive speaker ecosystem. An Echo Dot can be attached to any speaker system in your home to tie it into a whole home, multi-room audio system.

If you have speakers already (which most people do), you don’t actually have to buy anything beyond an Echo Dot. The Dot occasionally goes on sale for $35, an ideal time to stock up if you are going the multi-room audio route.

Any Downsides?

Yes, Amazon’s multi-room audio system doesn’t appear to be tied into Apple Music. While you can connect directly from a smartphone to an Echo device to play music within Apple Music’s app, Alexa functionality currently isn’t available. That functionality that requires a Sonos for multi-room (for now).

However, you can upload your iTunes music into the Amazon cloud in order to take advantage of Alexa. Another option would be to setup a media server in your home, like Plex, in order to have a central location for all your music.

Goodbye Sonos? Echo devices just got multi-room audio for free

In case you have an Amazon Prime membership, the retail giant has just added access to the company’s new music streaming service Prime Music. Similar in concept to music services like Spotify or Beats Music, Prime Music provides access to approximately 1 million tracks from both Warner Music Group and Sony Music. However, competing services that charge a monthly fee for subscription offer about 20 million tracks.

Albums included in on Prime Music are from artists such as Justin Timberlake, Pink, Bruno Mars, Blake Shelton, The Lumineers, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna. Amazon has also created a number of pre-selected playlists that offer up music related to a specific theme. Customers can also create their own playlists to queue up on a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet.

Similar to Amazon Instant Video, Prime subscribers can download entire albums or playlists to listen to when offline. This is a particularly useful feature when traveling on a plane, basically any area where Wi-Fi access is limited.

If you aren’t an Amazon Prime subscriber, Amazon is providing free access for an initial 30-day period. After that point, you would have to pay the $99-per-year fee for Amazon Prime. Beyond the new music service, Amazon Prime also includes 2-day shipping on all qualifying purchases, access to thousands of movies and television shows on Amazon Instant Video (including a huge selection of HBO content added last month) and a book rental each month using the Kindle Lending Library. You can read more about why we think Amazon Prime is a good deal here.

Also, be on the lookout for more perks when Amazon launches their new 3D smartphone next week. It’s highly likely that Amazon Prime membership will be wrapped into the product in some form.

Perk Alert: Amazon adds free music streaming to Amazon Prime

Being from Minneapolis, recently crowned Most Hipster City in the US, I’ve done what any good hipster would do and gotten into vinyl records. Most of the records I’ve acquired over the last couple of years have come from Goodwill, garage sales, or from friends’ parents who are more than happy to get rid of boxes of old records collecting dust in their basement. It’s been a lot of fun discovering old artists, being forced to actually listen to albums all the way through, and hearing those crackling sounds you just can’t get on Spotify.

But perhaps the most fun of all has been seeing all the hilarious album covers, most coming from the 70’s and 80’s. There are many “funniest album cover lists” out there, and I won’t even attempt to include them all here, but here are 10 of the more ridiculous/entertaining covers I’ve recently come across.

Stevie Wonder, Talking Book (1972)

Talking Book not only had great songs like You are the Sunshine of My Life and Superstition, but gave the world this amazing album cover, featuring a pensive Stevie playing in the dirt. Emo before it was a thing.

Electric Light Orchestra, On the Third Day (1973)

On first glance this one looks like your standard 70’s band photo. But then you look closer and notice these guys are all exposing their belly buttons and it’s like “wait, what?”

Meat Loaf, Bat Out of Hell (1977)

It’s Meat Loaf and the title is Bat Out of Hell, so you expect it’s going to be all sorts of ridiculous. And Meat Loaf definitely doesn’t disappoint.

Even more ridiculous? The back of the album:

The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers (1971)

The best part of this cover is hard to see from a picture: the actual, working zipper on (presumably) Mick Jagger’s ultra tight jeans; pulling down the zipper reveals a pair of whitey-tighties. Naturally, the back of the album features his butt.

Village People, Go West (1979)

There is just so much ridiculousness going on here I don’t even know where to start: the Indian chief wearing a traditional headdress while sipping on a pina colada? The random horses in the background? All the hawaiian shirts?

Raffi, Raffi’s Christmas Album (1983)

I remember having this cassette as a kid and not thinking it was weird or creepy at all…

Kiss, Lick it Up (1983)

What’s weirder than a bunch of grown men wearing ridiculous face makeup? Those same guys not wearing any makeup, apparently.

The Billy Cobham-George Duke Band, Live On Tour in Europe (1976)

Here’s a record I bought soley for the awesome cover art (and ended up enjoying for the music). Seemed only right to give George Duke a shout out as he just passed away a couple weeks ago.

Herbie Mann, Push Push (1971)

Here’s another great cover by a lesser-known artist. You can frequently find this gem in the bargain bin at the local used record store. Just a naked man and his flute.

Isaac Hayes, Juicy Fruit (Disco Freak) (1976)

No explanation needed.

10 Ridiculous Vinyl Covers For Your Record Collection

I can’t get enough of Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, and I know I’m not the only one. It’s joining the ranks of Somebody That I Used to Know and Call Me Maybe as the earworm of the moment, and I’m perfectly fine with that. I hear it everywhere from the grocery store to the bar and bumping out of a fellow driver’s car in between.

A clever frenchman rocking the handle PV NOVA has created a genius interpretation of the hot song as though it was created in various different decades. The Evolution of Get Lucky takes listeners from 1900 to 2020 in the span of three minutes, and it’s well worth a listen. Not surprisingly, the 1970’s version doesn’t sound all that different from the original.

The Evolution of Get Lucky

Now, who’s going to put together some sort of mashup combining this with The Evolution of Dance?

Evolution of Get Lucky

Developed by the same photographer, Henry Hargreaves, that brought you Deep Fried Gadgets, this series of photographs takes all the food and other items requested by popular musicians when on tour and sets them up for a single photo.

Musicians featured within the set include Billy Idol, Al Green, Britney Spears, Prince, Beyonce, Marilyn Manson, Van Halen, Rihanna, Mariah Carey, the New Kids on the Block, Busta Rhymes, Lady Gaga and the late Frank Sinatra.

Looking through Hargreaves portfolio, some of his other work is related to food as well. Other sets include the alphabet written in bacon, rainbow colored food, subway maps built out of M&Ms and portraits of iconic figures designed using pieces of toast. You can take a look his site here to see some of the other photo sets.

Check out the Musician photo set below:

Frank Sinatra

24 chilled jumbo shrimp, Life Savers, cough drops and one bottle of Absolut, Chivas Regal, Jack Daniel’s, Courvoisier and Beefeater Gin as well as white wine and red wine.

Billy Idol

Pepperidge Farms Chocolate Chip Cookies, one tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!

Al Green

24 long-stem red roses, thorns must be removed

Beyoncé

Baked chicken seasoned with sea salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper and garlic.

Britney Spears

McDonald’s cheeseburgers minus buns, fish and chips, 100 prunes and figs and a photo of Princess Diana in a frame.

Busta Rhymes

Guinness, 24-piece fried chicken and a pack of Rough Rider condoms.

Lady Gaga

A plate of cheese on ice. Nothing that smells bad.

Mariah Carey

Cristal champagne complete with a bendable straw

Marilyn Manson

Just some Gummy bears.

The New Kids on the Block

Stacks of Oreo cookies and Häagen-Dazs ice cream

Prince

Coffee and tea that includes lemon, honey sugar, cream and fresh ginger root on hand. A B-12 injection and a doctor to give the shot.

Rihanna

Turkey bacon and turkey sausage as well as hard boiled eggs.

Van Halen

Herring doused in sour cream, M&Ms (minus any brown ones) and a large tube of KY jelly.

Photos of Everything Musicians Request When on Tour

Just what the internet needs, another pointless site to waste time on! You weren’t doing anything important today anyway, right? Meet the Procatinator!

I actually read the web address wrong and was pretty surprised that I hadn’t already wasted hours of my life away at procrastinator.com. After a closer look at the site, which features cat gifs that align perfectly with a song (usually some guilty-pleasure ear candy), I discovered the site was so much more interesting and worthy of my time than Procrastinator.

In the name of research, I spent way more time than I’d care to admit clicking through different cat/song combos. In case you don’t want to waste endless  hours looking at every single spectacular cat, you can check out my choices below. Be forewarned, these are gateway cats and I won’t take responsibility for the inevitable dip in your productivity.

Click one of the pictures below to load the Procatinator:

Enjoy Wasting Your Day on The Procatinator