Despite all the attention around Alexa, Amazon's Echo speakers are first and foremost speakers. You can stream music from platforms like Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora and more.

The steps below also work with Amazon's other service, Music Unlimited, which costs $7.99 a month for Prime members, but gives you access to a wider range of songs, as well as more comprehensive ...

Once you've got these skills enabled, you'll feel like you're on your way to using your Amazon Echo to its full potential. Here are the first four Alexa skills you'll want to enable before all others.

You can play podcasts on your Alexa speaker using a variety of platforms, like Spotify or Apple Music. Amazon Alexa speakers usually default to Amazon's TuneIn platform to stream podcasts.