Can someone de-mystify DLNA vs BlueTooth general availability?

[Windows Central Question]

I currently have windows 10 pcs, phones, and tablets. I also have a couple of Bluetooth and even one WiFi (DLNA) speaker. To me, Bluetooth is quite limiting and wifi seems to be a much better option. However, I can only get the WiFi speaker to work when streaming music that is in my personal collection on the computer.
Somewhere along my struggling journey, I have been led to believe that digital rights management is the holdback for WiFi functionality in apps like Groove, Pandora, etc. But if that is the case, why does Bluetooth work so freely?

If you can tell me how to stream from Pandora or Groove from my pc and/or phone to my WiFi speaker, you will make me a happy man and you need not answer the question of why WiFi is so difficult and Bluetooth so straight-forward. Uh, but don't simply point me to VLC player or something. Either I am too dumb, or the VLC solution is not very simple either.

 

[a5cent]

To get any of this to work, you need to understand a bit about what is going on.

WiFi is the the physical connection technology. It's basically the replacement for cables.

DLNA is a protocol. You can think of it as a language. The physical connection (like a telephone or Wifi) won't help you much if you can't speak the same language as the person/device on the other end. If you have a device on your WiFi network that "speaks" DLNA, you'll only be able to communicate with it using other devices or software that also "speak" DLNA.

The third component is the codec. While DLNA enables devices on the network to discover and communicate with each other, a DLNA device is still pretty useless if it's being asked to play a music format it knows nothing about (kind of like asking the guy on the other end to insert the CD into the tray, when all that guy has is a cassette tape deck). That guy/DLNA device will understand what you want him to do, but just won't be able to do it.

Anyway, you forgot to mention what software you are currently successfully using to stream music from your PC library to your DLNA speaker. Whatever it is, it will be DLNA compatible.

Groove doesn't support DLNA (a major gripe of many people and IMHO inexcusable for a music app). That simply won't work. I don't know what Pandora software you are using. Pandora on iOS or Anroid support DLNA. I have no idea if any of Pandora's Windows software does.

Anyway, there are a gazillion ways to use DLNA, and it's hard to be specific without knowing exactly what you are looking for. Maybe something like JamCast can help you out:

Stream Tunes From Spotify, Pandora From Your PC Wirelessly to Consoles, Smartphones With Jamcast - We Got Served

It will stream anything to your DLNA speakers that you can play on your PC. Whether you're playing files stored locally on your PC, streaming music from Pandora or Groove, Playing a Youtube video in your browser... whatever. If you can get it to play on your PC's speakers, Jamcast will be able to intercept that and stream it to your DLNA speakers too.

Hope that helps.