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BBC Radio not using Alexa preferred speakers

  • 28 September 2019
  • 34 replies
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M
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I have the BBC skill set up in Alexa and if I ask Alexa to 'play BBC Radio 2' it plays from my Echo Spot rather than the SONOS speakers that I set up as my preferred speakers in Alexa groups. If I disable the BBC app, then Alexa gives me a message saying something abut the previously enabled app is disabled do I want to enable it. To make it work I have to say 'Alexa play BBC Radio 2 in the Sitting Room'.

If I say 'Alexa play Virgin Radio' (or any other radio station/music request) it plays through the SONOS speakers.

I know this might be more of an Alexa question than a SONOS question but I'm asking just in case any of you SONOS experts have come across this and know a fix!

Edit: I did do a search and found nothing, but now I've posted I see that this question has come up before although the answer is to do what I'm doing ie add 'in the sitting room' or 'from TuneIn' to the command, which isn't a really great solution.
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Best answer by mvosloo 28 September 2019, 17:04

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34 replies

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 😀

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. 

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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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.

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.

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. 

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

C

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

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.)

Martin Banham
Userlevel 2
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It looks like the trick of adding “…. from the BBC” to the Alexa command to a Dot for asking for a BBC radio station to be played on a Sonos Device in the same room has been disabled - temporarily or permanently. 

If anyone does work out a way to do this again, please post - I don’t want to have to replace my Connect with the new Alexa enabled version (first world pains I know)

I am not Percy Sugden
J

I have the same problem as of a similar timeframe.  There are a few possibilities, including it being one of those strange temporary glitches that seem to affect Alexa on a particular system from time to time.  If it were a general problem I would have expected more posts on it by now.

I have tried most things I can think of.  It is not convenient for me to do a complete system reboot just for this issue at the moment.  I will try it at some point, but with little optimism that it will help.

I have tried disabling and re-enabling the BBC skill and the Sonos skill.  I have deleted the whole Alexa group and set it up again.  The preferred speaker is respected for Amazon Music and the non-BBC radio stations I have tried.

I can’t help wondering if this still goes back to the issue of the BBC removing BBC stations from TuneIn, which means that play on Sonos relies on the BBC skill.  Up to now, that respected the preferred speaker provided I used the right form of words.  Now all instructions to play BBC stations are played on my Echo Dot instead of my Sonos speaker.

I have three groups set up with preferred Sonos speakers and all are suffering from this problem.

So my experience matches that of @Simon_6.

I’ll give it a couple of days to sort itself out before I spend any more time on this.

UKMedia
Userlevel 7
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I suggest that you disable then enable the BBC skill in the Alexa App. If 5he problem persists, then please disable then enable the Sonos skill and retest.

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)
S
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I had this working consistently for months. I have an Echo Dot and a Sonos speaker set in each Alexa Group with the Sonos speaker set as the Preferred Speaker. If I said “Ask BBC to play Radio 4” it would play on the preferred Sonos speaker(s) for that Dot. 
 

For no obvious reason this has stopped working in the last few days and now the BBC skill always plays on the Echo Dot. I now have to use the Sonos app to play Radio 4 through the Sonos speakers. I have 3 Alexa Groups set up like this and it is affecting all of them.


If I ask Alexa to play music (i.e. not using the BBC Skill) without specifying a room, it still plays on the Preferred Sonos speaker so it doesn’t appear to be a problem with the Alexa set-up. I can only assume it’s a problem with the BBC Skill. 
 

Has anyone else experienced anything similar in the last few days?

U

Now it seems to work without having to specify the room, if you ask for “Radio [x] from BBC” and your groups are set up correctly 

Without “from BBC”… just plays on the Echo 

UKMedia
Userlevel 7
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It is possible to output to either a Specific room, an existing Sonos Group or all Rooms but I agree that this still doesn’t reflect the old functionality before the BBC pulled support for TuneIn via Voice.

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)
U

Please see my consolidated instructions to resolve this: https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/step-by-step-guide-to-play-bbc-radio-station-via-voice-control-6834993

Thank you UKMedia - I appreciate your help, though I will point out that even this way requires having a separate command per room which isn’t very “Alexa”. I just want things back the old way, the same command whether BBC or not, and playing on the speaker I’m stood in front of (or paired with) rather than having to call it out by name. I don’t think we have a solution for that yet. 

UKMedia
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Please see my consolidated instructions to resolve this: https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/step-by-step-guide-to-play-bbc-radio-station-via-voice-control-6834993

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)
U

Having the same problem - if you have an Amazon Echo paired with an old Sonos Play 1 (using the echo to supply voice commands to the Sonos) then there’s no easy way to get it to play BBC stations via voice commands. Non-bbc work via TuneIn and it reroutes the audio to the Sonos properly. For BBC you have to say “Alexa listen to Radio 6 Music from BBC” which is cumbersome in itself, but also doesn’t respect the grouping that says you want it to play on Sonos rather than Echo. 

 

Whilst I could set up an individual voice command per speaker it would be nice - as with literally all other non-BBC radio stations - to have one command that works on all my devices whether they’re Alexa-enabled Sonos Ones or a pairing of Amazon Echo and Play 1. 

 

 

M
Badge +2

I also didn’t like to use Trigger to get the BBC radio station to play so I worked out that I can use the IFTTT set up to create a routine within the Alexa app. I have created a routine that activates with’Alexa play Radio 2’ which runs the IFTTT routine to run BBC Radio 2 from Realplayer. The IFTTT routine shows as an option under Action when setting up the Alexa Routine and then from within that you can select any routine that you have created within IFTTT.

M
Badge +2

I came back to this to see if anyone had a solution and to my delight someone does. So another thanks to Derrick123 as this works for me although my wife says she refuses to use the word Trigger.…

And as someone else mentioned above, when selecting SONOS select Favourites to select BBC Radio 2 from Realplayer.

Bizarrely I still have TunedIn Radio 2 in my favourites and it still played… but I changed it to RealPlayer.

R

Thanks Derrick. I have been demanding Radio 4 in vain for ages. Alexa would give me random rural radio stations and podcasts or tell me she could not find a station with that name! I will have to explore the possibilities of IFTTT further. 

J

Thank you Derrick123, now works as it should again. Took an hour to configure but got there in the end. A couple of additions which should help. I had no '+ button' but scrolled down to 'create your own' (for some reason searching for this doesn't work). When you are looking for an 'action' in the menu, search for Sonos, and click on 'play favourite', you then get to the menu you need. Sounds complicated, it is a bit but once done it makes sense!

D

My pleasure.  So glad it worked for you. 

 

J

SOLVED - Thank you Derek123.   The IFTTT route works well and results in simpler commands as you can also pre-specify the destination Sonos speaker in the set-up. So simply ‘Alexa, trigger Radio Four’ connects directly to the kitchen speaker.  I have been trying to find a flexible solution for some time and the end result is exactly what is needed and I can forget about messing around with Google Home etc

D

You can get bbc stations to play through sonos speakers.  You need to download IFTTT to your phone. Then link your sonos and alexa to IFTTT . If you then go to the Sonos app and add radioplayer you can find the BBC radio stations from there and add them to my sonos.  Then  go to IFTTT tap get more and the + button. Tap THIS , Type in Amazon alexa. Tap "Say a specific phrase" type in your trigger phrase in the box that says what phrase. Then follow the boxes that come up. 

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