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Alexa welcomes Apple Music to Amazon Echo

  • 30 November 2018
  • 63 replies
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63 replies

chicks
I use Tidal on Sonos 1 and set Alexa to use Tidal as default music service. Works great.

Thanks for confirming! Good indication that Apple Music just might work via Alexa on Sonos, without Sonos needing to do anything. That wasn’t the case with Spotify, or with a host of other Alexa skills, though, so time will tell.
P
I use Tidal on Sonos 1 and set Alexa to use Tidal as default music service. Works great. I have Apple music too and am excited to see it as an upcoming option. Tidal + Apple music is a great combo.
chicks
Lol.
S
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Alexa Cast streams from the cloud, controlled from your phone running the Amazon Music app. The phone doesn’t need to be connected to your WiFi.
Well that's cool. wish airplay was like that.
Apple is always at least three years behind the competition, lol. AirPlay is a dinosaur.

Which tells me you know nothing about Apple, Airplay, and especially Airplay 2.

Enough to know that AirPlay is my last choice, just above BlueTooth, for my iPhone and iPads. It requires much more bandwidth than casting, requires your phone to be on while playing, like BlueTooth, simply isn’t on the same playing field as the competition. Maybe on the HomePod, but having listened, and read the reviews (outside the Apple fanboy rags), the HomePod loses to the Beam, to stereo-paired Ones, and certainly to the Play:5. Virtually every review.

Everything you said is incorrect and that is easily proven but I'm not going to further pollute this thread with responding further. There are plenty of places you can rag on Apple without knowing what you are talking about.
chicks

Alexa Cast streams from the cloud, controlled from your phone running the Amazon Music app. The phone doesn’t need to be connected to your WiFi.
Well that's cool. wish airplay was like that.
Apple is always at least three years behind the competition, lol. AirPlay is a dinosaur.

Which tells me you know nothing about Apple, Airplay, and especially Airplay 2.

Enough to know that AirPlay is my last choice, just above BlueTooth, for my iPhone and iPads. It requires much more bandwidth than casting, requires your phone to be on while playing, like BlueTooth, simply isn’t on the same playing field as the competition. Maybe on the HomePod, but having listened, and read the reviews (outside the Apple fanboy rags), the HomePod loses to the Beam, to stereo-paired Ones, and certainly to the Play:5. Virtually every review.
S
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Alexa Cast streams from the cloud, controlled from your phone running the Amazon Music app. The phone doesn’t need to be connected to your WiFi.
Well that's cool. wish airplay was like that.

As I mentioned above Airplay 2 does in some circumstances pull directly from the music service.
S
Userlevel 5
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Alexa Cast streams from the cloud, controlled from your phone running the Amazon Music app. The phone doesn’t need to be connected to your WiFi.
Well that's cool. wish airplay was like that.
Apple is always at least three years behind the competition, lol. AirPlay is a dinosaur.

Which tells me you know nothing about Apple, Airplay, and especially Airplay 2.
Meanwhile Sonos and many other audio companies are getting Airplay2 into as many of their products as fast as they can because their customers want it.
S
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Airplay 2 does not always stream directly from your phone to the device.
For example HomePod siri voice commands will stream music from the music service via internet to the HomePod.
yeah only if you have a home pod, If you have sonos the chance of you having a home pod is about nil.

Having a HomePod or not has nothing to do with how Airplay 2 works which is what I was responding to. There are also other scenarios where Airplay 2 pulls directly from the music service.
You are incorrect that people who own Sonos or Homepods might not have both. I myself know many people who have both. I have four Homepods in two stereo pairs and a Beam, Sub, and rear Sonos Ones and two Sonos Ones for outdoors.
The Homepods sound better for music than anything Sonos makes including the Play 5 which is much more expensive. In fact I sold two Play 5's on Craigslist after stereo pairing came put for the Homepods.
I use Sonos for home theater and cheap outdoor speakers and Homepods for music. I also like the 360 coverage since SQ doesn't change as you move around a room.
chicks

Alexa Cast streams from the cloud, controlled from your phone running the Amazon Music app. The phone doesn’t need to be connected to your WiFi.

Well that's cool. wish airplay was like that.

Apple is always at least three years behind the competition, lol. AirPlay is a dinosaur.
chicks
There is no indication of that these days. You can control Sonos speakers directly from the Tidal app or airplay from the Tidal app.
I think Sonos finally realized it was hurting sales to have to use the app for everything.
Airplay 2 does not always stream directly from your phone to the device.
For example HomePod siri voice commands will stream music from the music service via internet to the HomePod.

Yes, exactly. Folks love their music apps, and most of them have vastly improved over the last couple years. Most will now wirelessly connect to Sonos speakers in some manner.
P
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Alexa Cast streams from the cloud, controlled from your phone running the Amazon Music app. The phone doesn’t need to be connected to your WiFi.

Well that's cool. wish airplay was like that.
P
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Airplay 2 does not always stream directly from your phone to the device.
For example HomePod siri voice commands will stream music from the music service via internet to the HomePod.

yeah only if you have a home pod, If you have sonos the chance of you having a home pod is about nil.
chicks
I suppose if you are going to use an app to play music they would rather have you use the Sonos app to do this? (I guess they do promote airplay) So with alexa cast does it stream from your phone to the speaker like airplay or does it stream from the sono's it self?

Alexa Cast streams from the cloud, controlled from your phone running the Amazon Music app. The phone doesn’t need to be connected to your WiFi.
S
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There is no indication of that these days. You can control Sonos speakers directly from the Tidal app or airplay from the Tidal app.
I think Sonos finally realized it was hurting sales to have to use the app for everything.
Airplay 2 does not always stream directly from your phone to the device.
For example HomePod siri voice commands will stream music from the music service via internet to the HomePod.
P
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There was never an official announcement about Alexa Cast either, a huge improvement for Amazon Music users. It works, better than Chromecast even, but not a peep from Sonos. Too busy tweeting about a Beastie Boys and colored speakers? :8 I suppose if you are going to use an app to play music they would rather have you use the Sonos app to do this? (I guess they do promote airplay) So with alexa cast does it stream from your phone to the speaker like airplay or does it stream from the sono's it self?
S
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I assumed you were interested because you use Tidal.
I had not heard of Alexa Cast so just read up on it.
Even though I have a Beam and four Sonos Ones I connect a Dot to them so I don't have to guess which features they will support...
chicks


Have you tried it?

Tidal? Can’t try it without a subscription. Alexa Cast? Yes, works very well. You’d think Sonos would be shouting it from the rooftops...
S
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Thanks! So, Tidal has been available via Alexa for at least a week now. Does it work on Sonos via Alexa? There was never an official announcement about Alexa Cast either, a huge improvement for Amazon Music users. It works, better than Chromecast even, but not a peep from Sonos. Too busy tweeting about a Beastie Boys and colored speakers? :8

Have you tried it?
chicks
Thanks! So, Tidal has been available via Alexa for at least a week now. Does it work on Sonos via Alexa? There was never an official announcement about Alexa Cast either, a huge improvement for Amazon Music users. It works, better than Chromecast even, but not a peep from Sonos. Too busy tweeting about a Beastie Boys and colored speakers? :8
Keith N
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Hello everyone and thanks for all the discussion about this. Rest assured, our team is always interested in helping you control the music service you love with voice. Nothing to share now, but stay tuned. We will share information directly on this post as soon as it is available.

Moderator Note: Apple Music can now be used with Alexa on your Sonos system. Read more here.
S
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I'm sure Sonos will say something...give them a minute as this just happened.
chicks
Tidal was recently added to Alexa. I’m not a subscriber, so can’t tell if it automatically works on Sonos. Would be a good indicator if it does (or doesn’t). I don’t understand the official reticence from Sonos.
melvimbe

Actually I think it would be amazon needing to make the change. As the request goes to amazon, which translates it down to a command that sonos API understands. This is why you can not just tell alexa to play a song and have it play on sonos with any music service. Alex needs to have the music services catalog so it can correctly translate to the sonos api.
If this is the case it might not launch right away with support for sonos

Well, I didn't mean to imply Amazon didn't have any changes to do on their side, just that Sonos could have a little bit to change on their side. But Amazon isn't actually using the Sonos API for Alexa, as I understand it. It goes something like this.

1 - User makes call on Alexa device
2 - device sends voice to Alexa cloud
3 - Alexa cloud processes request and makes call to Sonos cloud, using Alexa's APIs, not Sonos. You're correct that it's not a 'blind' request to Sonos. Alexa cloud won't send it to Sonos if it's not from a music service Alexa supports itself.
4 - Sonos cloud sends the request down to your Sonos speaker(s)
5 - Your speaker streams the music directly from the music service.

So, I'm imagining adding Apple service could very well work with no change from Sonos at all. It could also be that there is some minor tweaks, config data, some testing, to be done before they release to the public. Probably all done in the cloud. I'd even say that anything that might have been needed at the speaker firmware level was probably already done in the most recent update...but Sonos couldn't mention it then.

Can we get @Sonos to reply to this thread and clue us in on whether we can now play Apple music using Alexa ?

From what I've witness, Amazon has a habit of releasing features like this and not giving their partners like Sonos any heads up. I think this is what happened with Alexacast. So Sonos may have only recently found about it, and can't give much of an official statement till they know more about it. However, I can't think of a good reason why this won't happen with Sonos in a relatively short time frame.
Danny
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Can we get @Sonos to reply to this thread and clue us in on whether we can now play Apple music using Alexa ?
S
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Both Amazon and Apple maker their devices and services viable to tie you more tightly to them. Revenue for these is secondary to selling their main products to you. I don't think Amazon or Apple is concerned about revenue from music services as Pandora, Spotify, or Tidal. None of these have made money by the way or show any signs of doing so. I use Pandora and Apple Music so I'm pretty happy about this development. I think it will work with Sonos.
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