Alexa welcomes Apple Music to Amazon Echo

Connected my echo dot to Apple Music using the just released skill. Preferred speaker is set to my Play:5. When I ask her to play anything from Apple Music I get

“Apple Music is not supported on this device”

Except of course it is, if I play using the Sonos App!

WHEN WILL THIS WORK ?

A great question. Sonos would greatly benefit from having this during the XMas shopping season. They’ve already failed miserably by not having Google Assistant ready when promised. Amazon and Apple will benefit greatly from these Sonos screwups. Two huge opportunities missed. Not good!

Apple Music is not available on Sonos through Alexa yet.

https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/recent-update-now-breaking-groups-with-alexa-6817246/index2.html#post16294125

Apple Music through Alexa is only available in the US, for now at least.

Apple Music for Alexa is available only in the United States.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209250

I really hope they send this solution ASAP

@Peteo, I suspect you're in a much better position. From what i've read Apple will be added as a Music Service and in Settings you will be able to select Apple as your default music service. So on your Sonos One or Beam it will just use Apple.

Hmm are you sure. I just read this:
To use the facility, users have to enable a new Apple Music skill in the Alexa app, followed by linking their account


Edit: from the exclusive usa today report:

"From the Amazon Alexa app on your phone, you can select Apple Music and link the account to an Echo, just as you might do via the app with Spotify or other streaming options. If you choose to make Apple Music the default music service, Alexa will play the song, artist or playlist of your choice upon request, or for that matter Apple’s Beats 1 radio, without your having to direct Alexa specifically to Apple Music. If Apple Music is not the default, you’d have to say, “Alexa play X on Apple Music.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2018/11/30/alexa-welcomes-apple-music-amazon-echo/2151574002/

So it looks like Badger is correct

More digging. I'm not an Amazon Skill developer (must look in to that!!), but it appears that with the new Music Skill API, it's possible that Music Skills and Music Services (in settings) are one and the same. For instance; I enabled Pandora as a Music Service and notice now that I also have a Pandora Skill installed (which I didn't add). Which suggests they are one and the same. If that is true, then when the Apple Music Skill is added it will be available under Music Services to be enabled as a Default service.

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.

Nice, hoping this means I can set default music to Apple Music in Alexa and use Alexa to play from Apple Music on my Sonos Ones. I have switched entirely to Apple Music for the watch and HomePod, but kept a individual Spotify subscription just for the Sonos Ones. If this works out it'll be bye bye Spotify for me.

Tried it today. I can play songs from Apple Music on my Echo Dot, but when I try on my Sonos One, it says "Apple Music is not supported on this device."

:(

Hope Sonos and Amazon get it together so this works.

my thoughts as soon as i heard! 🆒

Nice, that will work great for me. I have it set to Amazon music (non paid) right now but It only has a limited selection of music

If you're referring to The Verge article, I believe they have the details wrong about using a Skill. The press release does not refer to a Skill. I suspect the author of The Verge article was guessing the way its enabled