Alexa + Sonos: How it Works

I'm confused. I have the newer play5s. Both grouped as Living Room. I updated my app. I updated my Sonos system. I even scanned devices in Alexa app (but not sure if Sonos should show up there or not (it does not). I say things like "Alexa, play jazz in the living room" and she says things like "I cannot do that in the living room" and other versions of "no".

I have Hue bulbs that are grouped as Living Room too. Any ideas what I should be saying? How I should be saying it? Or why I am having problems?

More than likely it is defaulting to the bulbs. Name the bulbs "Living Room Lights" or something similar (or name the Sonos "Living Room Sonos".

I had the very same problem... had to rename the bulbs. Thanks!

Having trouble getting my iPhone app to update. It goes to the app store and does nothing. Any ideas?

Are you kddding me!!! So you are saying Alexa only works if you are signed up with an online streaming service! I waited 18 months to be told that! What is the point? Unbelievable.
With all due respect, I think the point is that streaming is future for most music consumption. Globally, digital already accounts for more than half of music revenue, and streaming is the majority of that. It grew over 60% in one year. Obviously in places like the United States streaming is even more dominant.

There's nothing wrong with the way you choose to consume your music, but you have to be aware of the reality of the market. Sonos has prioritized these streaming features for the initial release. You can't think it'd be smarter to hold off until they've covered every aspect if this portion is ready.

Will this be available in the future? For me that's the beauty of Sonos, the way it handles the local music library.

I hope so too, but they've clearly said this is only the beginning.

The major value of Sonos to me is that it is service-agnostic, so this sucks.

You seem to be taking the view that this is the final release. Sonos approach is agnostic, but this first iteration only has one service. Other things are coming, but it doesn't make sense to hold off until it's all ready.

There's nothing wrong with the way you choose to consume your music, but you have to be aware of the reality of the market. Sonos has prioritized these streaming features for the initial release. You can't think it'd be smarter to hold off until they've covered every aspect if this portion is ready

With all due respect not all of us "choose" the way we listen to music - we're lumped with it, but at least Sonos has done a relatively fair overall job of always supporting local music vs gradual adding of many streaming services - but this seems to fly in the face of that choice.

I do appreciate the lack of planned obsolescence from Sonos overall - I just thought local music would be their first priority.

While I understand your perspective, mine is the exact polar opposite. If I group a set of rooms, I don't want voice control to arbitrarily break that grouping, especially since there's no current support for grouping in the voice command architecture.

Which is to say, it works exactly as the current controller does. You have to actually separate grouped rooms in the controller.
Sure, but in the app, it shows you exactly what is currently grouped so you can edit it before you hit play.

But I get where you are coming from. If you keep your groups relatively static and know that two rooms are always going to be paired together, then I can understand why you wouldn't want it to break those up. But Sonos groups don't seem like they are really designed to be static and that's not how I use them.

Maybe the default behavior could be a user-preference specified in the Alexa skill...

I can bear with for the benefits. Trust me. I love how my home sounds via sonos. I was discouraged not mad or pissed off. I just really wanted to have it today....... I will use and learn and be ready for Apple Music. I just hope it's around the corner and I'm at the last house from the corner.

I can bear with for the benefits. Trust me. I love how my home sounds via sonos. I was discouraged not mad or pissed off. I just really wanted to have it today....... I will use and learn and be ready for Apple Music. I just hope it's around the corner and I'm at the last house from the corner.
I have no insider information, but I wouldn't hold your breath from Apple Music support. It seems like this integration is set up such that Alexa is handling all the syntax processing, searching for music, etc., and then passing it onto the Sonos to play. For that to work, both Alexa and Sonos need to support the music service in question. They both support Spotify and we know that is in the works -- it's just not done yet. But Alexa doesn't support Apple Music.

Again, I don't know for sure, but I don't think you will be able to use Alexa to play songs from Apple Music on a Sonos speaker until Alexa itself supports Apple Music as a service. And who knows when that will happen...

If I ask Alexa to start playing music in the bedroom all the Sonos speakers will play. Should it be possible to just start playing on one speaker or do I need to group/ungroup in the app before giving the play command?

Ditto. Is it possible to get Alexa to play in multiple rooms at once?

After the app update, my Lutron PICO remote no longer allows me to Play/Pause music, Volume up/down and toggle favorites work, I unpaired, and repaired the remote with no luck, anyone else with a remote able to confirm if this is the case for them?

Kumar, you're welcome :)

And yes, I'd assume since it depends on the operation of the Amazon cloud to interpret the requests, it would be only working in the countries that have Alexa supported.

Alexa only seems to work with my Play 1’s and not Play 3 or Connects! It will play and pause but when I ask for specific music on those speakers it just plays whatever was last playing through the sonos app. I noted that only the Play 1 speakers are listed as devices under settings in the Alexa app