Whether you’re planning a house party or just trying to find an easier way to listen to your audio throughout your home, there are a few options at your disposal to now play the music on your phone to multiple speakers in the house. We’ve described the options below with notable pros and cons so you can make an informed decision to meet your needs.
Apple AirPlay
With the release of iOS 11.4 in 2018, Apple made it easy to play anything from an iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV onto any number of speakers in the home. Since then, over 100 models of speakers from every top brand have become AirPlay compatible. Unlike many of the alternatives in this list, AirPlay is app-agnostic, meaning it works with any audio app on iPhone rather than limiting you to only a select group of partnered audio services. This means you can play your Spotify, Audible, Facebook Live, and even Safari browser audio onto any number of speakers in your home without restriction. If it shows up on the playbar of your iPhone, it’ll play from your speakers as well! And with the wide variety of AirPlay speakers on the market, you can mix and match your home with your favorite speakers from different brands and still have them play together. Apple AirPlay is definitely the most versatile solution for multi-speaker audio, but with the strict limitation that you need an iOS device or Apple TV to use it.
Notable Pros:
- Integrated directly into your phone without requiring you to download a separate app
- Very easy and intuitive to use for non technologically-confident people
- Will play anything. Doesn’t require you to use specific partnered audio services
- Has the highest number of compatible speaker options compared to any other multi-speaker technology currently in the market
- Lossless audio transmission makes better-than-Bluetooth sound quality
- Does not need to pair with any specific phone, making it easy to use by multiple people at once
Notable Cons:
- Only available on iOS devices and Apple TV (though some third party apps can enable functionality on Android, Mac, and Windows as well)
Amazon Alexa
If you’ve already got Alexa in your home, you’ll be happy to know that all Alexa-enabled speakers can play the same audio at the same time. With the help of the Alexa app, you can assign your speakers to various rooms in the home, and then use a variety of voice prompts to play audio from the specific speakers you want to hear. The biggest caveat is that you can only use multi-speaker functionality through specific partnered Alexa audio services, which currently include notable favorites like Audible, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify but strikingly exclude YouTube, SoundCloud, Tidal, Deezer, and other audio options like Facebook Live and voice messages. In short, you can’t actually play any of the audio from your phone to multiple speakers using Amazon Alexa, but if the only things you listen to are Alexa’s partnered audio services then this may be a good enough option for you.
Notable Pros:
- Decent number of compatible speakers in this ecosystem, though still not nearly as many as AirPlay
- Voice prompts enable some level of flexibility and convenience without needing your phone
- Works for Android and iOS
Notable Cons:
- Doesn’t truly play audio from your phone to multiple speakers
- To use multiple speakers, you will be restricted to a handful of partnered Alexa audio services, with notable exclusions of YouTube, SoundCloud, Tidal, Facebook Live, and Twitter Spaces
- Voice assistants might create privacy concerns for your home
- Requires an extra app on your phone to use
- Lossy audio transmission makes for poorer sound quality
Google Chromecast
[Basically the same thing as Alexa, with the same pros and cons]
Notable Pros:
- Decent number of compatible speakers in this ecosystem, though still not nearly as many as AirPlay
- Voice prompts enable some level of flexibility and convenience without needing your phone
- Works for Android and iOS
Notable Cons:
- Doesn’t truly play audio from your phone to multiple speakers
- To use multiple speakers, you will be restricted to a handful of partnered Alexa audio services, with notable exclusions of Audible, SoundCloud, Deezer, Facebook Live, and Twitter Spaces
- Voice assistants might create privacy concerns for your home
- Requires an extra app on your phone to use
- Lossy audio transmission makes for poorer sound quality
Sonos
- Sonos speakers are great options for high end audio
- First ones to really pioneer the concept of wireless “multi-room” audio
- Have their own technology to do this, works seamlessly within their own brand
- Most Sonos speakers tend to also be compatible with Apple AirPlay, Google Chromecast, and Amazon Alexa
- Needs an extra app to set up and use
- Extremely pricey speakers
- Offers a lot of extra features for audiophiles
- Takes a long time to set up, so is best for hardcore audiophiles who are also technologically adept
Pros:
- Plenty of partnered audio services to choose from including every major and several niche audio apps
- Incredible sound quality and extra audio features
- Compatible with AirPlay, Amazon Alexa, and Google Chromecast
- Works with Android, iOS, and TVs
Cons:
- Still limited to only using partnered audio services, so cannot truly play everything on your phone onto the speakers such as audio from web pages or voice recordings
- Needs a separate app to use
- Speakers are very pricey
- Sonos technology only works on Sonos speakers. Must use AirPlay, Alexa, or Chromecast to work with other speakers
- Relatively long setup times for complex devices
- Can only be used by users added to the Sonos app. May be difficult for multiple people to use the same speakers.
Bluetooth Multi-Speaker Options
There are also various Bluetooth speakers that tout multi-speaker or multi-room audio features, with popular options such as UE Boom and JBL Flip. While these options are appealing because of their use of Bluetooth, which is a familiar and well integrated technology in many platforms, they face the serious limitation of only working with speakers of their own brand, and usually also only for speakers within the same generation. For example, a UE Boom Gen 3 will only work with other UE Boom Gen 3 speakers, and not with a UE Boom Gen 2 or Gen 4. In addition, the Bluetooth technology behind this makes the multi-speaker features finicky, sometimes making it difficult to connect or disconnect multiple speakers or causing audio dropouts. However, if the goal is to use the multi-speaker features only once in a while for limited periods of time, this option may be sufficient. We recommend that you do your research on the speaker model you choose to go with to be aware of all its limitations regarding multi-speaker audio!
Pros:
- Uses Bluetooth to play all the audio from your phone
Cons:
- Requires an extra app to use
- Can only use multi-speaker features with other speakers of the exact same brand and generation. Not cross-compatible across various speaker brands
- Multi-speaker functionality is not consistent and may have severe limitations
- Can only pair with one phone at a time. Not easily usable by multiple people at once
- Lossy audio transmission makes for poorer sound quality