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BBC Radio not using Alexa preferred speakers

  • 28 September 2019
  • 34 replies
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34 replies

J

I haven’t fully explored whether there are downsides to this, but my current solution is to wire the Dot to my Play:5’s line in.  Obviously that is not a solution for those using a Sonos speaker without a line in. 

(One small downside for me is that next to the speaker is not the optimal location for the Dot.)

C

Same problem. It’s stopped about 5 days ago and now won’t play on the Sonos Play 1. 

N

Exactly same issue, been working fine now will only play on Echo. Have done all the usual stuff disabling and enabling skills to no avail.

Stopped using preferred speaker ONLY with BBC Sounds

S
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For the record it has started working again now. Saying “Alexa ask BBC to play Radio 4” results in the preferred Sonos speaker(s) being used. I didn’t change a thing. 

D

To anyone as frustrated as me reading this thread:

 

Amazon have changed the Group settings and “Preferred Speakers” are no more.  

 

Worse than that, there is now an option at the bottom of the screen where you choose your speakers for your group called “Playback Options”.  I needed to select “Always” rather than “Only when you say the group name”.

 

At last!!  Now “Alexa, ask BBC to play Radio 2” results in Radio 2 coming from my Sonos pair.

 

The internet is full of outdated references to “Preferred Speakers”.  I’m not sure when it changed but Hallelujah - this’ll finally stop my wife sulking.

A
Userlevel 2
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Is this working for anyone?  It used to work great and then the BBC policy change broke it.  I’ve followed the various work arounds since which did help but I cannot get this to work at all now.  I’ve tried deleting the BBC and Sonos skills on the Alexa app again.  I’m trying to get the echo to get the 3 grouped Sonos speakers to play a BBC station.  Asking echo to play ‘BBC radio 2 from the BBC’ results in echo announcing ‘playing bbc radio 2.  BBC sounds’.  And then silence.  Any help to get this useful feature working again would be appreciated.  My ‘playback option’ is set to ‘always’.  Thanks.

J

It's still working for me, but I did notice recently that a couple of my Echo Dots had gone AWOL from the Alexa groups where they were supposed to be controlling things. I suggest you check whether your Alexa groups are still as they should be.

A
Userlevel 2
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Thank you for your reply. Knowing that it was still possible gave me the motivation to try (yet) again. Groups all looked good. Disabled/re-enabled BBC skill. No luck. Disabled/re-enabled Sonos and success!  Great to have this working again. Hopefully it will remain stable for some time. 

DGR1
Userlevel 3
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Hi all. I’ve been using Echo devices and Sonos speakers for some time, including the period of BBC-induced tedium that broke standard default speaker functionality with BBC Sounds.

For ages I’ve been using the ‘Alexa, ask BBC to play Radio 6’ workaround to send music to Sonos speakers as opposed to playing on the Echo device itself.

Anyway, my daughter was listening to Radio 1 the other day through Sonos. I asked how she started the station, and she said that she just asked for it with ‘Alexa, play BBC Radio 1’. I’ve now tried it, and it works. This is the standard command that had been broken for ages!

I notice that the BBC Sounds skill had an update 10 days ago. Might have done something?

Apols if this is old news, but thought I’d share in case it’s not 😀

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