You are correct that Alexa will not play locally stored music, this isn’t a Sonos limitation.  Alexa is a cloud based system and doesn’t know about your locally stored music.  You will need to initiate the music using the Sonos App, although once started you can use Pause, Stop, Next and Previous commands via Alexa.

I’m not sure why you’re thinking the feature is more likely to be implemented as time goes by.  As I’m sure you know, the market size for people using local libraries is getting smaller, not larger.  Businesses tend to focus efforts on things that more people care about, not less.  No doubt that a lot of the people who use local libraries do so because they don’t want to use cloud services like Alexa, making the market even smaller.  If there is a resurgance in use of local libraries, like there has been for vinyl for whatever reason, then maybe it has a chance.

Second, we’re talking about Amazon Alexa, which essentially exists for the purpose of keeping people in the Amazon ecosystem and spending their money there, whether it be music streaming, buying goods, etc.  They don’t care about your local library or supporting it.  They would only care if Google Assistant supported it or something, and thus they had to do it in order to keep customers.  But that’s not happening.

Your best bet would be for Sonos Voice Control (SVC) to start supporting local libraries.  However, since it wasn’t supported from the beginning, it leads me to think that it’s not a technical no brainer.  And again, because of the small market size, I expect them to focus on streaming services like Spotify with bigger markets, and additional language support.  Not to mention the need to produce new speaker products, since that’s how they actually make money.

Again, not at all unbelievable if you think about it.  But to be clear, you cannot innitiate playback, but you can use basic control commands like volume, next/previous track, mute, pause/resume playback while using your local library.

Just another thought.  Although I haven’t tested this myself,  I believe that Plex allows for the playing of locally stored music:  You’ll need to install Plex, and then add that account as a Music Service within the Sonos App.

Mounting Network Resources | Plex Support

and supports Alexa voice Control 

Getting Started with Alexa Voice Control | Plex Support

I wasn’t aware of the plex skill.  I’ll have to try this out.

That sounds like a Sonos apologetic response.  I see MANY posts of people with their own music libraries who want to play them.  It’s these greedy companies that want you to stream music from them for a monthly fee.  Alexa has a Sonos skill.  Sonos has the ability to add the Amazon music service.  So Alexa should or rather could know about your Sonos music library.  Either Sonos or Amazon or both, do not want this to work!

What leads you to believe the Amazon music service knows anything about your local library? 

Before this thread descends into a confrontational exchange, please remember users in this thread are not Sonos employees and we’re just trying to help.

Just to briefly add here, I’ve just tested this and the Plex Skill does indeed ‘happily’ play a users locally held music library, via Alexa, to Sonos devices - so this is at least one way to achieve the desired outcome.

When I was talking about the market, I wasn’t talking about an informal opinion based on observing people posting on the internet, but actual market data.

Like I said before, that would mostly be Amazon.  But I wouldn’t even say it’s a matter of “don’t want it to work”, but “do not think the effort of developing the feature” is worth it.  Considering how Alexa voice works, it’s not surprising really.  For the most part, your voice command goes to Amazon cloud to be interpreted and processed.  If you ask to “play xxxx”, Amazon will validate that playing xxxx is a valid request, pass it on to Sonos servers, which then passes it down to the Sonos speakers in your home.  It’s not much different then if you were playing on echo speakers, just that it would skip Sonos servers and pass directly back to your speaker.  If Amazon doesn’t know what ‘xxxx’ is, than it stops right there.

The plex skill is different. you say ‘ask Plex to play xxxx’. The Amazon server recognizes that it should just pass everything after Plex on to the plex server to deal with for Plex to deal with.  Sure, Sonos could have had the skill operate like Plex does, but having to say “Alexa ask Sonos to….” every time gets annoying fast, not to mention the other deeper integrations you’d lose, like alexa groups and not having to name the speaker to play on every time.

Again, this would only help a small percentage of Sonos customers who still use local libraries and likely don’t want to use Alexa anyway.

I’m not at all saying I wouldn’t want the feature.  It’d be great.  Particularly through SVC rather than Alexa, and I was a little surprised that it wasn’t originally included since I thought it would be easy from a tech standpoint.  But I don’t know, and also understand that it can’t be that high on the dev list considering all the other streaming services and languages that customers as a whole would surely find more useful.

There is no technical excuse for SVC not supporting local libraries. Mind you, there is no technical excuse for it not supporting Spotify either, but it doesn’t.

I have to point out that my now-retired Alexa-Sonos integration did both of these things. May it RIP.

So does Emby but Amazon makes sure it works in a “wonky” manner.  I can play music from my music library using Emby, but cannot rewind, play the next song, etc.  It doesn’t work well!  I’m sure Plex has limitations too.

I’d think there may be some sort of various legal teams differing interpretation of GDPR here as well….but I could be wrong.

I don’t think it’s exactly a fair comparison as your skill required a local server set up, took text passed from Alexa and then passed it on to Sonos speakers via API.  SVC is locally processing voice commands on the speaker itself and I’m not 100% sure that results in the same sort of text that you get from Alexa, that could then easily (ie, with speakers limited resources) be processed to receive a local library file  (or Spotify) for playback. Maybe it can, and it seems like it can looking at it from a far, but some assumptions have to be made about how exactly SVC works.

@zBernie123 

See link for what’s available via the Alexa Plex skill:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/236324808-alexa-voice-commands/

Yes, Emby has very similar functionality and a skill for Alexa.  Lots of voice commands listed that DON’T WORK!  The only thing I can do with Emby is play a song or album from my music library via Alexa after saying “Alexa, open Emby home”.   After that NOTHING WORKS like next song, replay, etc.  I’m sure Plex is similar.

Actually, the situation has gotten even worse.  Greedy Amazon has changed how Amazon music works.  I don’t mean the $8.99 / month subscription, rather the free service that comes with prime.  Now if I say something like “Alexa, play “Blue Wind” by Jeff Beck”, Alexa now responds with “Playing Blue Wind and similar songs”.  Sometimes you get the song you requested, other times you get “similar songs’.  I’m seriously considering cancelling my prime membership!

It is VERY unbelievable that Sonos is unable to play music stored on my NAS.  Emby media player can do it, I do it all the time.  So I can play local with the Alexa Emby skill but not the Sonos skill?  Hmmmm.   However, Amazon does place limitations on the functionality because they want you to pay $8.99/month for Amaon music.    If Emby can do it, Sonos can do it,

I will take your word for it, but that is what should have been in SVC from day one; add to that the fact the SVC is available globally, being not dependent on Sonos having to match the local server infrastructure presence of an Amazon or a Google in order to offer latency free deployment of the Alexa or Google skill in remote to the US/EU geographies.

The only reason I can see for this miss is that Sonos does not see this as a user need large enough to be worth spending the development dollars on.

PS: As a Spotify user, I don’t bother with my local library of some 12000 tracks anymore; I just finished a session using it just to make sure that it still  works, using the rarely used Sonos app to do so. So that if I ever need it as a back up, it won’t let me down.

So to be clear, Sonos does play music stored on your NAS, you’re talking about voice control only.  Also, you just said a few posts ago that the Emby skill does not work very well.  Also, Emby and Plex alexa skills require you to prefix commands with “Ask Emby”, which Sonos does not do. I’ve already talked about why that is.  Also, Emby (and Plex) require you to setup your own server or a cloud service to index your library.  Sonos does not, as all processing is done on the speakers.  I already talked about that too.  Also, Emby and Plex are almost entirely geared toward playing local media content, while Sonos is geared more towards home theatre content, streaming services, aux sources, and local media a distant 4th….and they make money by selling speakers.

I’m not saying that Sonos can’t get it done via SVC, but the comparison should consider all the variables at play rather than treating Emby and Sonos as equal situations.

While I’m sure that development time and costs are a factor, as I said eariler, I don’t think we can assume that SVC, where all the firmware is on the speakers themselves,  would work exactly the way  Alexa + controlAVs local server used to work.   If it did, they you’d expect every streaming service and the local library to be supported when they went life.   That did not happen though.  For streaming service, perhaps legal and licensing reasons are involved if it’s not technical.  For local libraries, the reason appears to be technical.

I mentioned that I use Emby to play locally stored music using Alexa.  My point being of Emby can do it, then why can’t Sonos?

Maybe Sonos prefer to not tread on the toes of their ‘partners’, who already provide this service and so don’t wish to compete in this area, but have chosen to leave the feature with Plex for example… just as one (plausible) reason for why it may not be a feature of SVC at the present time? 

SVC supports Amazon Music and Apple Music, which have competing voice assistants Alexa and Siri respectively.  I wouldn’t imagine that SVC  doesn’t support local libraries in order to avoid competing with the Plex Alexa skill. 

 However, it would make some sense (to me anyway) that instead of supporting local media directly, SVC will eventually support the Plex service to access your media. I can see that as a positive collaboration for both companies.  That would save some development effort on Sonos part, since Plex would do a lot of the leg work.  It could awesome be a possible exit strategy for Sonos to stop support of local libraries directly.  And Plex is already active in the TV steaming apps development, which Sonos is rumored to want to get involved with.  From the Plex point of view, they gain some potential customers in the greater tie to Sonos.

I’m not saying that Sonos is working with Plex, just that it would be a valid reason if they were working together or something.

Yes, I suspect Amazon does not allow Sonos to stream local music as it would compete with them, considering how ubiquitous Sonos is.  However, they do allow Emby to play local music albeit in a bastardized fashion.  I can play a song or album with Emby via Alexa, but no other actions work such as next song, or rewind, etc.  Alexa just replies that it cannot be done with this type of stream.