How to Set Music Alarms Using Alexa or Google Assistant

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(Pocket-lint) – Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, although different platforms, often offer similar functionality, such as music alarms.

Music alarms let you ask Alexa or Google – depending on the devices you have – for a song, genre or playlist to get you out of bed in the morning, rather than waking you up to those awful alarm noises standard offered by telephones.

Here’s how music alarms work on Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant and how to set them up.

How to Set a Music Alarm with Alexa

• Ask Alexa to play an alarm with a song, genre, etc.
• Available for any Amazon Echo or Alexa device

Ask Alexa to play a musical alarm

You can ask Amazon Alexa to play a specific song, playlist, artist, or genre as an alarm. The feature supports multiple music services, so it can pull alarm tones from Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora, TuneIn, SiriusXM, and iHeartRadio. Music alarms work on any Alexa-powered device, not just Amazon Echo-branded smart speakers. The only exception is Fire TV, which does not support alarms.

To set a musical alarm, just say “Alexa, wake me up at 7am with Adele” or “Alexa, wake me up with 70s music at 8am” or “Alexa, wake me up with ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ ‘at 5 a.m.’. You can be as specific or as vague as you want. You can even set a music alarm by song lyrics, in case you don’t know the song title. However, this only works with Amazon Music.

A music alarm also doesn’t need to be set up every night. If you wake up at the same time, you can ask Alexa to wake you up “every day” at a certain time.

Choose the default music service in the Alexa app

Note: This step is not necessary to play musical alarms. It simply specifies where Alexa should pull music alarms from.

If you need to set up your Echo or Amazon Alexa-enabled device first, check out Pocket-lint’s handy guide on how to do it. Open the Alexa app > Menu > Settings > Music & Podcasts > Default Services. After choosing your preferred service, select Done.

When you choose a default music service, Alexa will always use it to play your music for Alarms, Streaming Stations, and Requests.

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How to set a music alarm with Google Assistant

• Ask the assistant to play an alarm with a song, artist, etc.
• Available for all Google Home or Nest speakers

Google Assistant to play a musical alarm

Like Alexa, you can simply tell Google Assistant to set a music alarm on your Google Home or Nest speakers. They do not work on Cast devices. Say “OK Google, set an alarm for 7am playing Beyonce”, and the media alarm on your Google Home or Nest speakers or displays will wake you up. You can set a music alarm for any artist, song or playlist.

You can also set a recurring music alarm by saying “Ok Google, set the Ed Sheeran music alarm to 7am every day” and if you want to see what alarms are set, you can say “Ok Google, what alarms are set ?”.

The assistant will pull from the music service you set as default and alarms will sound for 10 minutes if not stopped or snoozed. To stop the alarm, you can simply say “Stop”. To snooze an alarm, just say “Snooze” or “Snooze for 10 minutes”.

Choose the default music service in the Home app

Note: This step is not necessary to play musical alarms. It simply specifies where the assistant should extract the musical alarms from.

If you need to set up your Google Home or Nest device first, check out Pocket-lint’s handy guide on how to do it. Once you’ve set up your Google Home or Nest device, open the Google Home app > Tap the Settings icon > Tap Music.

From there, you can select your default music service. You will need to link all accounts, such as Spotify or Apple Music. Once linked, you can select your default service by tapping the circle on the right.

To connect your account, tap on Link, then sign in and complete the process. Whichever music service you choose, Google Assistant will always play your music alarms from that service in the future.

Written by Maggie Tillman and Elyse Betters. Edited by Britta O’Boyle.