All quiet on the update front.

A bunch of new skills were added to alexa on Sonos One a few weeks ago. It’s still beta and under development.

Hi ianm,

With many features, we don't often talk about what's coming until it's here. I don't have any specific news on either of those requests I can share, but that doesn't mean either that we are or are not working on them.

There's lots of work we're doing with Alexa right now, and some of the most recent things added are those skills Chris mentioned, and there are more coming soon too.

Wish I could share more, but for now, stay tuned!

Chris wrote:

A bunch of new skills were added to alexa on Sonos One a few weeks ago. It’s still beta and under development.

Can you share with us non beta users? Cheers.

It’s public beta - what you have.

ianm wrote:

Seems like the flurry of updates to alexas so called skills has ceased. Its been a good few months since the release date. Still no news on napster which a number of people requested, still no news on the local stored media playing. Guess they wont be coming due to the silence.

Ryan S wrote:

Hi ianm,

With many features, we don't often talk about what's coming until it's here. I don't have any specific news on either of those requests I can share, but that doesn't mean either that we are or are not working on them.

There's lots of work we're doing with Alexa right now, and some of the most recent things added are those skills Chris mentioned, and there are more coming soon too.

Wish I could share more, but for now, stay tuned!

Im not really sure what to make of that. Sonos were happy to say they were working on google assistant and pandora among others. So why not announce their stance on two of the other big issues raised, namely napster and local music playback.

Im considering buying a few more smaller sonos speakers to make every room in my house sonos capable but if the things i use it for are not able to be controlled by voice then i certainly wouldnt buy any more sonos ones, id go with the cheaper sonos play 1s. If they are working on it and they say so then id pay the extra for the future capability.

The Ceo said they were looking to add local music voice support. Nothing on Napster. Theories are that local music support won’t be via alexa (so that would be reason we haven’t heard anything more - since they haven’t announced other voice methods that would allow this). Maybe at the June press conference they will add more on their direction.

There is 16x more RAM in the Sonos ones (although this difference was kept quiet until airplay2 compatibility was announced), they will be airplay2 capable....... eventually.
Play1s now are really the old version, and will gradually be left behind, the start being no airplay2.

Chris wrote:

The Ceo said they were looking to add local music voice support. Nothing on Napster. Theories are that local music support won’t be via alexa (so that would be reason we haven’t heard anything more - since they haven’t announced other voice methods that would allow this). Maybe at the June press conference they will add more on their direction.

Thanks chris. So if theories are to be believed would that mean sonos are working on their own voice system? To me, that would be ideal as sonos, prior to alexa integration were perfect, lots of different ways to stream music, able to stream my own library, seemless grouping, the list goes on. Bring alexa into the mix and in my opinion, its a poorly thought out gimmick with rubbish integration and extremely limited use.

Sonos, many years ago, when i first bought into the system, actively encouraged people to sign up to napster with its unlimited different streams, excellent library and high quality music at the unbeatable price of £5 per month. With alexa voice, we are expected to double our outlay to sign up for an alternative. I cant for the life of me see any valid reason why i would pay twice as much for a single stream provider when i have speakers in virtually all rooms and they are often playing different songs. I could pay extra for amazons family package but again, why would I when napster already provides what i need. Can you please ask if sonos are considering adding napster as many people have requested it, just like many people have requested local music playback.

Thanks
Ian

Napster isn’t supported by Alexa or google home so your out of luck. And I don’t see those guys adding. You can certinaly as amazon or google.

Your only hope really on Napster it local library control would be a new Sonos voice service. If they do have such a thing on works I can’t imagine we would see until 2019.

I don’t think Sonos will 'reinvent the wheel' and develop their own voice control services to compete with Alexa, Google or Siri. Instead I think Sonos will use all those existing systems as part of a chosen smarthome setup.

In many ways, that makes their speakers attractive to everyone using any of the voice enabled services.

Napster needs to get their act together and begin to integrate their own services with Alexa, Google, Siri and Sonos ... somewhat similar to the Spotify business model perhaps.

Apple maybe needs to collaborate a little more too, I think.

Chris wrote:

Napster isn’t supported by Alexa or google home so your out of luck. And I don’t see those guys adding. You can certinaly as amazon or google.

Your only hope really on Napster it local library control would be a new Sonos voice service. If they do have such a thing on works I can’t imagine we would see until 2019.

Im happy to announce that youre incorrect on this Chris :D

Emailed napster and this was their reply...

Thank you for contacting Napster Customer Support,

I can understand your concern. Sure I'll help you with this.

I am sorry to inform that Napster is not yet compatible with the Alexa device. We are working with Alexa to bring Napster to the platform. We don't have an exact time frame at the moment but will let you know just as soon as it is available

Yay. Lets hope its not too long.

That sounds pretty similar to what TuneIn told me over a year ago when I asked about when TuneIn Premium would be available through Sonos. That still hasn't happened... and I'm convinced it won't ever happen.

Though Napster is definitely at a disadvantage with other music services being available through Alexa and they aren't... so maybe they have a fire lit under them... 🙂

I’m sceptical of any csr canned responses.

Chris wrote:

I’m sceptical of any csr canned responses.

Devils advocate response here, would you be sceptical of sonos csr canned responses? :?

Absolutely.

I've not seen any new skills for Sonos connected via Echo to Alexa. Where are the commands to select a room etc? Certainly seems like the Beta is moving very slowly.