How to Specify a Provider

[jplamb13]

I am using Home Assistant and have a Spotify account added for each family member added to MA (all with a different name), is there a way for me to specify in a Home Assistant script the provider I would like MA to use? i would like to avoid the kids music messing up my Spotify :)

[OzGav]

What is happening that is messing up your Spotify? Playlists should be played using the source Spotify account.

[jplamb13]

It's not the playlist, it's when an artist is selected, it will be available via all Spotify accounts setup as a provider so I was looking in to if it's possible to set it up so that when daughter 1 presses the button on HA to play a particular artist it uses her account and it doesnt use daughter 2 account who may not like that artist.

[OzGav]

When you say “when an artist is selected” do you mean when an artist is added to the library? If so, there isn’t a way to do what you ask as there are no “users” within MA. I can change this to a feature request if I correctly understand what you are asking for?

[jplamb13]

I was meaning in home assistant when i specify an artist i wanted to know if i could tell it to use a particular provider setup in MA. I have only recently setup MA and it looks like i may have wrongly assumed it would show in spotify that the first provider int eh list was playing music but it doesn't seem to so i think my assumptions may have confused everything. i will continue running it. it was super straight forward to setup and is working well :)

[OzGav]

The only reason you need all three Spotify accounts is if you want access to the playlists from each. MA takes all providers and combines them into one combined database and then makes them opaque. You cannot specify a provider, MA makes it own decisions about which provider to use.

[gtbdf1]

Since Spotify only allows one stream per account, it would be fantastic to be able to specify which Spotify account to use as a source, so that we can stream from two different spotify accounts to two different speakers at the same time.

[kulisau]

are there any plans to implement this provider select feature?
I'm also interested into it.

[OzGav]

Not at this time. The only solution at the moment is for people to run multiple instances of the MA server. The HA actions allow for this situation.

[eebiec]

I would also like this. I had assumed it was a thing because it seems obviously needed, but was disappointed to find out that it can't be done yet.

Spotify only allows one stream per account, so this would let my daughter listen to her music in her bedroom while my son listens to his music in his room at the same time.

I would also like to not "mess up" people's most often played, spotify-assumed account preferences etc... so if my daughter listens to tons of a certain artist via music assistant, I want it to play via her own spotify account so that I don't start getting recommendations based on her music in my account. Does that make sense?

I'd like to be able to specify if certain speakers should always play from a certain account (the kids' bedroom speakers), and also specify certain home assistant users to always trigger playback from a certain account (so they can have home assistant dashboards on their phones with music assistant there - and it will always play their own account).

[OzGav]

Correct when calling an action you cannot yet specify a user. However, if it is a playlist that is played then that always uses the originating account.

[eebiec]

oh wait... i want her home assistant user to be associated with her own music assistant profile/user, but it doesn't seem like that is possible?? when she is logged into home assistant, is there a way for me to let MA know that it's supposed to use the MA profile i created for her? Otherwise i don't see the benefit. she does not want to be using MA in a browser.

[marcelveldt]

If you use a specific instance id URI for the playback it will use that

[eebiec]

can you please elabourate? i'm not as techy as you are i guess so i don't understand exactly what you mean.

[OzGav]

i want her home assistant user to be associated with her own music assistant profile/user,

If you use the SIGN IN WITH HOME ASSISTANT button then an associated account will be created on MA. You can then adjust the providers that user has access to

[gtbdf1]

So you need a separate instance of MA running per user?

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[OzGav]

Why do you ask that? No you don't.

[cemarsh]

An optional per-player "preferred provider" (minimal, opt-in)

I'd like to float a minimal version of the per-player provider idea that respects MA's
existing combined/opaque-library design while solving the multi-account household case.

Problem (recap): With two accounts of the same single-stream service (e.g. two
YouTube Music / Spotify accounts), MA merges them into the unified library and picks the
stream source opaquely by quality. For a single listener that's perfect. For a household it
means (a) two people can't reliably stream at once — MA may route both through the same
account and hit the single-stream limit — and (b) one person's playback pollutes the
other's history/recommendations. The current answer (multiple MA server instances) works
but is heavy.

Proposed feature: an optional per-player config entry, preferred_music_provider
(default: unset → today's behavior). When resolving stream details for a track on a player
that has it set: if the track has a provider mapping for that provider instance, use it;
otherwise fall back to the normal quality-based resolution. That's the whole change.

Why it fits MA's philosophy:

• The library stays merged and opaque — this is not "specify a provider" at the
  browse/library layer. It's purely an optional tiebreaker at stream-resolution time,
  scoped to a player.
• Opt-in; default behavior unchanged.
• Per-player (not per-HA-user) — keeps HA user identity out of the playback core, so the
  surface is small.

Payoff: the smallest change that unlocks "two people, two accounts, two simultaneous
streams" without standing up multiple servers — the #1 recurring ask across #2163, #435,
#2128, #4221.

Would maintainers be open to a PR along these lines? Happy to prototype if there's
appetite — checking the design direction first given the stated "providers are opaque" model.

[marcelveldt]

This already exists today, we always take into account the user requesting the playbacken picking where to stream from.

The only place where this is not yet working is HA initiated playback but work is in progress by @fmunkes to solve that