Start My DJ is a way to listen to your music collection through Alexa.
Simply add your songs, enable the Start My DJ skill via the Alexa app, and ask Alexa to play your song.
Add as many playlists and songs, all for free!
Ever since I bought an Echo (and a few Echo Dots) several years ago, how I consumed music has forever changed. Instead of using my laptop or phone, I would simply ask Alexa to play music, in my dining room, living room, bedroom, and even my car. I tried several music streaming services with Alexa and finally settled on what I think provides the best value for me. This setup was good enough for me to enjoy the music I enjoy.
Now fast forward to the summer of 2020. During COVID-19, with a toddler, staying safe indoors. Since my toddler loved to dance to music, my setup was perfect to play some music and burn off some of his super-charged energy. BTW, for those who do not have kids and not familiar with how they are, read up on this article: Children have energy levels greater than endurance athletes. I would ask Alexa to play kid-friendly music and also some up-beat dance music, which my toddler loved. So everything is working great, right? What's the problem?
As a bilingual household, we are raising our toddler to be bilingual as well. But we do not want to stop at just teaching two different languages. We would like him to understand the two cultures and be himself within the two different cultures. With that in mind, when I was playing English-only songs through Alexa, I saw that this could also be a teaching opportunity. What better way to get introduced to a different culture than by playing songs of that culture? He will remember the beats, the rhyme, the notes, and be familiar with a different culture just by listening to its music. So I go to my music streaming service and tried to find non-English songs that I listened as a child. And the result? Well, you guessed it. The selection was too scarce and I didn't have many options. And this is how the project (Start My DJ) was conceived.
I had quite a few non-English songs that I owned, but I would have to go to my laptop, find the file, and play it there or try to
fumble through the bluetooth settings.
Also, some of the children books came with CD's that I could play the MP3 files through my laptop.
But again, there was no easy option to play these music though Alexa.
So our team started building Start My DJ,
so I can help my child listen to the songs I listened to as a child, but now they are played on Echo devices.
I have released this service for free in hopes that it will help others with similar use case as mine.
Or perhaps, you will use it to solve a different use case.
Please let us know how you are using it!
If you have any feedback, comments, questions, or feature requests, please contact us!