Alexa Sonos Roam


Userlevel 2

Alexa will not connect to my sonos roam correctly- it will respond but then not play news, flash briefing, or music. All of my sonos devices (roam, beam, and move) will not play spotify through alexa. I have called support twice, and already tried the following:

  • On sonos app: disconnect and reconnect devices
  • On alexa app: 
    • Disable sonos skill and enable again 
    • Disable spotify skill and enable again
    • Delete all sonos devices and add again
    • Deregister all sonos devices and register again

None of these things have resolved the issue. I was told to post on beta community but I don’t have any projects open so cannot post on that board.

One of the reasons I bought the roam was for handsfree use of Alexa and to play music with spotify- none of these things are working. 


64 replies

Userlevel 3
Badge +3

@paulwhkh fabulous suggestion! Something Sonos did broke this. Can they just wind back to when it wasn’t broken? Mine had previously worked before that date too.

Userlevel 1

I am in New York and have an Alexa enabled Arc and move and am experiencing the same issue, so not limited to just Bluetooth devices. Super frustrating as both had been working since September of last year just fine until sometime in May/June. Bought an Echo dot and it works as expected so agree that something in the last release broke all the news/flash briefing. This is a core feature of Alexa, how Sonos released something that broke this and won’t give a timeline to fix instead of rolling back is bizarre. 
 

Also I spent about 6 hours on the phone with Amazon and Sonos, finally Sonos escalated to an engineer after I did all the previous mentioned steps on this chain dozens of times. Only to have an engineer tell me, “no need for a phone call we know about this and no eta.” So why wasn’t I just told that from the start when I called Sonos? Why is Alexa still green and “operational” on their status site when their engineers agree it isn’t operational?

I agree, roll back the release. They didn’t test enough. 

I have the same problem with a Sonos Move, Alexa's flash briefing stopped working months ago and I tried the fixes mentioned with no luck. Super annoying, hope at some point they fix this...

Userlevel 2
Badge +2

I haven’t seen any updates here, but having the same issue with Sonos Roam’s in Stereo (L+R) mode. No problem with Arc/Sonos Ones, but keeps telling me to enable to already enabled skill. 

 

In the USA, no other issues. Roams are detected in the Alexa (iPhone app) under iOS 15 but not as a pair. Will not respond to any alexa command other than “you need to enable skill for your sonos roam in the alexa app. Then ask me to discover devices.”

Ugh so annoying. I’ll just use Google.  

I’m still experiencing this issue. Has a solution been posted that I am not aware of? Thanks.  

Userlevel 2
Badge +2

My workaround was removing all smart assistants from the Roam and just use my iphone and desktop PC. 

I just hit the same problem setting up Alexa on my new Sonos roam. I fixed my issue by going into the Alexa app, disabled the Sonos skill and the re-enable. It prompted me to login to Sonos and then said it needed to automatically discover devices. It took it 30 second but eventually found the Sonos roam. After that I was able to play music.

Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Hi

This exact issue with Alexa in Mid 2022, I ask Alexa to play Apple Music, she announces Playing your station on Apple Music, but nothing happens right after, and it was working fine previously. The same, I’ve tried multiple things, reinstal the Alexa skill, factory reset to my Sonos Roam, reboot my network hardware, ad the voice Service multiple times, but unfortunately Alexa keeps having a bad behavior. The Echo 4 that I had befor worked better than this Sonos Roam, I don’t know how can I get it fixed, but it looks like a firmware issue on the device. As I read the rest of the comments here, it looks like it’s a común issue without any fix. Sooner or later I’ll be returning this and buy an other Amazon Echo or Alexa products of other brand, waiting for a portable Amazon Echo with Bluetooth capabilities launched someday     

Hi

This exact issue with Alexa in Mid 2022, I ask Alexa to play Apple Music, she announces Playing your station on Apple Music, but nothing happens right after, and it was working fine previously. The same, I’ve tried multiple things, reinstal the Alexa skill, factory reset to my Sonos Roam, reboot my network hardware, ad the voice Service multiple times, but unfortunately Alexa keeps having a bad behavior. The Echo 4 that I had befor worked better than this Sonos Roam, I don’t know how can I get it fixed, but it looks like a firmware issue on the device. As I read the rest of the comments here, it looks like it’s a común issue without any fix. Sooner or later I’ll be returning this and buy an other Amazon Echo or Alexa products of other brand, waiting for a portable Amazon Echo with Bluetooth capabilities launched someday     

It sounds like a ‘duplicate’ device issue, or a device/group with the same/similar name to the Roam. Perhaps check your Amazon device list and Alexa ‘enabled’ groups and check to see if that might be the issue and also consider deregistering each of your Sonos components from the device list before removing and re-adding the Assistant/Sonos skill.

this was happening to me all weekend all of a sudden after i had unplugged and relocated my router.  my roam just wasnt playing music via spotify or tunein, nor would it pause or stop any current music playing out of the blue.  google assistant worked fine, so it was just alexa.

 

the disabling then reenabling of the sonos skill in the alexa app seemed to fix it at the moment.   pretty awful bug imo.  

I’m one of the many out there that face the same critical issue with the Alexa feature. Spent a lot of time trying the various workarounds over and over but without any luck. The speaker consistently fails to play requested songs despite acknowledging the command. This is highly frustrating as I specifically invested in the Roam for its Alexa functionality.  It is so disappointing to see this persistent issue without a conclusive resolution or official updates after all this time (noticed thread is 2 years old). For context, I also own a Sonos Beam with Alexa, which has not encountered similar problems, highlighting that this is a specific concern related to the Sonos Roam...

I’m one of the many out there that face the same critical issue with the Alexa feature. Spent a lot of time trying the various workarounds over and over but without any luck. The speaker consistently fails to play requested songs despite acknowledging the command. This is highly frustrating as I specifically invested in the Roam for its Alexa functionality.  It is so disappointing to see this persistent issue without a conclusive resolution or official updates after all this time (noticed thread is 2 years old). For context, I also own a Sonos Beam with Alexa, which has not encountered similar problems, highlighting that this is a specific concern related to the Sonos Roam...

My two Roams are working fine with Alexa here…? It’s rare that they fail to play the requested audio. I have Amazon Music Unlimited set as my default music service FWIW.

Maybe check you have unique device names (and groups too) in the Alexa device list/App and that the device components (Speaker and Alexa component) are not duplicated in the Alexa App device list. Sometimes Alexa ‘enabled’ groups can be similarly named and give rise to the issue. 

It’s perhaps also worthwhile, removing and reinstalling the Sonos Skill in the Alexa App aswell, after removing, or renaming, anything Sonos-related within that App.

I’m one of the many out there that face the same critical issue with the Alexa feature. Spent a lot of time trying the various workarounds over and over but without any luck. The speaker consistently fails to play requested songs despite acknowledging the command. This is highly frustrating as I specifically invested in the Roam for its Alexa functionality.  It is so disappointing to see this persistent issue without a conclusive resolution or official updates after all this time (noticed thread is 2 years old). For context, I also own a Sonos Beam with Alexa, which has not encountered similar problems, highlighting that this is a specific concern related to the Sonos Roam...

My two Roams are working fine with Alexa here…? It’s rare that they fail to play the requested audio. I have Amazon Music Unlimited set as my default music service FWIW.

Maybe check you have unique device names (and groups too) in the Alexa device list/App and that the device components (Speaker and Alexa component) are not duplicated in the Alexa App device list. Sometimes Alexa ‘enabled’ groups can be similarly named and give rise to the issue. 

It’s perhaps also worthwhile, removing and reinstalling the Sonos Skill in the Alexa App aswell, after removing, or renaming, anything Sonos-related within that App.



After four days of attempting the suggested workarounds, including enabling and disabling the Sonos skill in the Alexa app, clearing devices and groups, I've only managed to get Alexa to work twice. Both times, it stopped functioning without any apparent reason after a while—no changes to the network, Alexa or Sonos app, and without closing the speaker (in fact, I disabled battery optimization to keep it active as much as possible). This is incredibly frustrating and appears to be a critical issue affecting a substantial number of customers, as one can see by searching the issue online. It's particularly surprising for a product of Sonos' quality, especially considering I don't encounter similar problems with other Sonos speakers I own (Beam, One). I eagerly anticipate an official update from Sonos on this matter, as it is a crucial problem that urgently needs resolution. Come on, Sonos...

After four days of attempting the suggested workarounds, including enabling and disabling the Sonos skill in the Alexa app, clearing devices and groups, I've only managed to get Alexa to work twice. Both times, it stopped functioning without any apparent reason after a while—no changes to the network, Alexa or Sonos app, and without closing the speaker (in fact, I disabled battery optimization to keep it active as much as possible). This is incredibly frustrating and appears to be a critical issue affecting a substantial number of customers, as one can see by searching the issue online. It's particularly surprising for a product of Sonos' quality, especially considering I don't encounter similar problems with other Sonos speakers I own (Beam, One). I eagerly anticipate an official update from Sonos on this matter, as it is a crucial problem that urgently needs resolution. Come on, Sonos...

If you’re not able to sort the matter then it maybe best to quickly reproduce the issue and then immediately submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and then contact/chat with Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what the Staff can perhaps suggest to resolve the matter or of course you could speak to Amazon Customer support. In my own case, everything is (and always has been) working fine here. Still works first time, every time, but maybe you have a hardware, or account fault. Give the customers services a call.

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