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Alexa can't play from Apple Podcast skill to Sonos

  • 2 September 2020
  • 21 replies
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How come Alexa can't play from the Apple Podcast skill on my Sonos smart speaker?

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Best answer by Corry P 12 February 2021, 17:20

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21 replies

Userlevel 6
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Hi @Philip_16, thanks for reaching out about your concern about Alexa not playing from the Apple podcast to your Sonos speaker, I’ll ask some questions to further check on this issue.

  • How does Alexa respond after saying the command?
  • Does Alexa respond the same on other music Services?
  • Did it work on the past or when did it start happening?
  • Are there any changes made on the settings on the Alexa or Sonos App before this happened?

If you need help or questions with any other information, Please be sure to let us know.

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Here is the answers to your questions:

  1. “you’ll need a connected accessory to play apple podcasts on this device”
  2. no, Pandora works fine
  3. never tried it before
  4. no changes

Thanks for the help!

 

 

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@Simon B any thoughts?

Userlevel 6
Badge +16

Hi @Philip_16, thanks for the update and the information that you provided. We’ll try to do some troubleshooting steps and check if this would work, if not, then we’ll take this further with our phone support team. 

I would like to recommend the following steps based on the order it is provided. Here is the complete guide on how to perform the steps below.

  1. Log out of ALL Amazon-related apps which are and not limited to the following. (Amazon Prime, Amazon Shopping, Amazon Alexa, etc.) 
  2. Open the Amazon Alexa app and disable the Sonos Skill.
  3. De-register any Sonos product on the Alexa App.
  4. Open the Sonos App.
  5. Remove Alexa Voice service.
  6. Force close Sonos app.
  7. Force close the Alexa App.
  8. Reopen the Sonos App. Add Alexa as voice service.
  9. Open Alexa app Add Sonos as skill
  10. Register Sonos speaker
  11. Add music service.
  12. Test to check if it works.
  13. Submit a diagnostic to capture all information performed on the Sonos devices.

Let me know your thoughts with the advice above.

We're here to answer any further questions you have.

Any update on whether or not this worked? 

Userlevel 6
Badge +16

Hi @antjessop, Thank you for reaching out and welcome to the community. Let’s wait for the response of the original poster if it worked. Are you having the same issue? If you have any questions or run into any issues, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are always happy to assist you.

The Sonos community is always here to help.

I get the response “Apple Podcasts is not supported on this device” when I ask Alexa to play something on my Sonos One. I have a UK Alexa and Apple account. Should I try the steps above?

Userlevel 6
Badge +16

Hi @antjessop, thanks for the update. About your question. You can try the troubleshooting above. But if it still doesn’t work, then we’ll take this further to check what’s causing that error message. 

If you have other questions with your Sonos products, feel free to reach out.

We're here to answer any further questions you have.

I have an Echo Dot in another room which works fine with Apple Podcasts. I will try the above steps tomorrow and get back to you.

Userlevel 6
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Hi @antjessop, thanks for the quick update. If you have any questions or run into any other issues, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are always happy to assist you.

The Sonos community is always here to help.

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@Simon B 

I did all the requested steps and submitted the diagnostics. It didn’t change anything. Apple Podcasts still does not work, but other podcast Alexa skills do work. 

Userlevel 6
Badge +16

Hi @Philip_16, thanks for the update and for trying some troubleshooting steps to resolve this issue. Since it’s still not working properly, I'll ask you to kindly contact our phone support team for further assistance and more in-depth troubleshooting steps. They may request remote access to your controller device and give additional options to this issue. 

Let us know what you have in mind with the advice above.

The Sonos community is always here to help.

Same situation here “Apple Podcasts is not supported on this device”. It would really help during the pandemic to have it work. Thank you.

Userlevel 6
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 Hi @gbser, Thank you for reaching out, and welcome to the community. Sorry to know that you have the same issue with your podcasts, I want to ask if have you tried the following troubleshooting steps above so we can check if that will work?

Let us know what you have in mind with the advice above.

The Sonos community is always here to help.

I have the exact same issue with my brand new Sonos Move.  The Apple Podcast skill works fine on my Echo Dot, but when I try the exact same Alexa command on the Sonos it fails with “Apple Podcasts is not supported on this device”.  All the other Alexa commands I’ve tried on the Sonos work as expected, so this seems to be a issue with the Sonos/Alexa/Apple Podcast skill combination.

Userlevel 6
Badge +16

Hello there @ggoldenberg, Thanks for reaching out, and welcome to the community. Sorry to know that you have the same issue as the others on this thread. Have you tried to do the troubleshooting steps posted above? To check if that will work for you. 

Keep us posted on how it goes and we're here to answer any further questions you have.

Hi. I finally got around to trying the steps above and it didn’t work.

Might this be a case that the Apple Podcast ‘skill’ is currently only designed to work on Amazon echo products only and is not available on 3rd Party Alexa ‘enabled’ speakers? There are quite a few ‘skills’ that do not work on 3rd party speakers, or so I thought. 

 

There is a list of ‘initial’ compatible Alexa ‘skills’ that worked with Sonos here:

https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-one-now-supports-many-more-popular-alexa-skills-6806792?postid=16231422#post16231422

 

It was not however updated on any regular basis, so I’m not sure about the Apple Podcasts skill.:thinking:

That’s what I was thinking.

Got the same issue on all my Sonos smart speakers 

Userlevel 7
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Currently, Apple Podcasts are not supported on Sonos

As an Amazon Echo (or similar) will use it’s Apple Podcast Skill to play podcasts, it just accesses your Apple account to play. 

Alexa running on a Sonos device will ask Alexa servers (which parse your voice command) to pass a streaming link to the non-Alexa part of the speaker (the Sonos firmware), but as a Sonos device can’t access Apple Podcasts directly, the link doesn’t work and the speaker doesn’t play.

Essentially, Sonos is willing to play anything our music partners allow us to play. I would suggest you get in touch with Apple and give them some feedback on this matter - the more people who do so, they more likely they are to action such a change.

Similarly, Amazon decide what Skills are viable on 3rd-party devices running Alexa, such as Sonos speakers. Having said that, if Apple separate Apple Music and Apple Podcasts (and the two apps would suggest they do) a Sonos speaker would still need access to the Apple Podcast servers before Alexa’s Apple Podcast skill would work.