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Alexa won't play BBC Radio stations

  • 23 November 2020
  • 5 replies
  • 1972 views

Sonos update and new app installed.

The new app drops connection frequently with a pair of Sonos Speakers I have and now, I am unable to play any BBC Radio stations which all played perfectly well using Amazon Alexa. A Amazon device I have works just fine.

Up until five days ago I was able to use my Sonos speakers to connect via Alexa to any Radio station, which was the main reason for buying these Sonos Speakers! I’ve spent over four full days now de-registering and re-setting these devices to no avail and I am very angry.

These very expensive Sonos speakers have now effectivly been rendered useless.

What’s going in Sonos?

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Best answer by UKMedia 23 November 2020, 13:05

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5 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

The BBC has restricted access via Voice and TuneIn.  Please see this thread which details the issue and some solutions: Step by Step Guide to Play BBC radio station via Voice Control | Sonos Community

I followed all of the tips, tricks and suggestions and unfortunatey could not fix the problem. I sold my Sonos kit and bought another product which works just fine. I'm sad because the Sonos speakers were sublime. No good however if I want to listen to the BBC.

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

I still listen to several of the BBC stations on my Sonos speakers. Shame you couldn’t sort out your access. 

On my Sonos One, I just ask alexa to "play bbc radio 6" and that works fine. Where I have a problem is in asking alexa to continue a show I've been listening to previously. Alexa is linked to my bbc account and this works fine on an Echo but not on Sonos One. I guess it's down to the Sonos implementation of Alexa. 

Seems that there’s a lot of conflicting thoughts on this one so before I toss some more cash at Sonos and upgrade to products with Alexa built in can anyone categorically confirm that I can use them to use voice commands to play BBC radio stations (without any workarounds)?

 

If not, I’ll be flogging the Sonos kit I have and replacing it with products that can do what I need. It’d be a shame but BBC radio is a bit of a must have for speakers in our house and to be honest I’d rather be able to use voice commands rather than the app (I know it’s a first world problem)

 

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