I’m not in the US.



What happens if you ask Alexa via the Echo Dot to play on your Sonos speaker?



“Alexa, play ARTIST from Apple Music on SONOS ROOM”

“Apple Music is not supported on this device”



If I don’t say “from Apple Music” Alexa plays from Amazon Music, even though I’ve set Apple Music as my default.

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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

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Apparently Apple Music through Alexa is not available in Europe yet.

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I really hope they send this solution ASAP

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Alexa will work with Apple Music on third-party devices 'soon'



Good news.



https://www.engadget.com/amp/2018/12/19/alexa-third-party-device-apple-music-support-coming/

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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

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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!

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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.

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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 ?

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The Sonos Speakers which have Alexa have a "baked in" version which sometimes has restrictions on the facilities available (e.g. Calling Facility does not work on the Sonos One). It would be good to know if Apple Music will be available via the Sonos Speakers that have Alexa, and also if it will be available in the UK!

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@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

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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.

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@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.



What I don't know is for those of us using a DOT or other Alexa to "connect" to a Sonos, whether the same will happen. I'm guessing so, but I don't know whether any update is required Sonos side before that will happen.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I'm sure Sonos will say something...give them a minute as this just happened.

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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.

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I am in the UK - my Alexa app (which was updated last week in the iOS App Store) does not offer Apple Music as a Music Service.

Has anyone, based in the UK, seen Apple Music on the Alexa app or are they rolling it out gradually or not at all in the UK?

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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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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.

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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.

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Apple Music was enabled today on Alexa. I configured it and it works on my Amazon Alexa devices.



However if I try to play music from Apple Music through Sonos devices Alexa replies, “Apple Music is not available on this device”. Works on Amazon Echo and Show. But not on Sonos. Super frustrating as I still have to get my phone out to airplay to Sonos. No voice control.



I bought these Sonos speakers for their Alexa integration but between this issue, not being able to use Sonos for drop in, and not being able to turn off the Alexa response sound on Sonos, I’m seriously regretting my decision to buy Sonos and am now thinking I need to power Alexa through a dumb amp and dump my Sonos.



Oh - and Sonos doesn’t act as a default Alexa device for a room either - smart groups. So that’s another missing feature.



These issues all make the Alexa integration more frustrating than useful on Sonos.

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Damn. There was a little hope that it would work.

But also, the latest update to Alexa in Canada didn't even include the Apple Music feature. booooooo.

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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.



I think chicks was speaking in terms of airplay 2 with Sonos speakers in his first 2 statements, and i have to agree with him. You might not need to stream through your phone/ipad when your speaker is homepod or AppleTV, but you certainly do with Sonos speakers.



I wouldn't necessarily say that casting from a specific app is necessarily better than airplay 2 though. Casting is almost always going to give you a better stream, but airplay, like bluetooth, is not limited to a specific streaming app.



Regarding which speakers sound better, 'better' is always subjective. I've seen reviews pointing both ways, but yes, mostly favoring Sonos. What matters is what you personally prefer.

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