When I say "Alexa play The Killers on " the music comes out of my Echo Dot.
When I say "Alexa play music on " it plays a random station on the Sonos.
That is to say if I tell Alexa to play random music it will play out of my Sonos. Anytime I try to specify what music or service I want results in the music coming out of the Echo Dot instead.
What am I doing wrong?
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You must name your Sonos speakers like "Living Room" or "Bedroom" and then say "Alexa, play the Killers on Living Room." In this case Alexa will find The Killers on Amazon Music and you will only hear The Killers and on your Sonos speaker. If you say, "Alexa, play The Killers on Pandora on Living Room" and you should get The Killers and similar music.
So they can’t have custom names basically?
Also if that’s the case how come Alexa recognizes my speaker and plays music to it if I just say “Play music on Arwen”?
Also if that’s the case how come Alexa recognizes my speaker and plays music to it if I just say “Play music on Arwen”?
Alexa must know what Arwen is then. Is that a speaker's designated name? Alexa also must know what music you have preset to play (default service/playlist).
Yes it definitely knows it’s there. I can tell it to “play music” on either of my speakers but if I try to specify a song, service, album, or service it defaults back to the Dot’s speakers.
Userlevel 7
+26
You can use a custom name with Alexa, but the voice assistant is better at picking out names that are used more often. For example, Bat Cave isn't a standard name, but it's used enough that Alexa is good at understanding the voice and converting it to text for issuing commands. Something like "Arwen" might not get the right text from the voice command.
I thought this too but every time I say “Alexa play music on Arwen” it works perfectly so it knows it recognizes the name.
This doesn't work, I tried it.
The other thing is, you can't rename the rooms. I tried changing "Family Room" to something else and Alexa would not find the device unless I said "Family Room", even though I had renamed it.
Userlevel 7
+26
After you change the name of the room in the Sonos app, you have to then tell Alexa to "discover devices".
@ladiesduck, what service do you use to play music through Alexa? Is it the same when you tell it to play specific music and when you play any music? It may be a good start to disable the Alexa skill and re-set up the link just to make sure everything has the right credentials and connection.
If you still have this issue, I'd suggest that you give us a call on our support line.
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