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Does Sonos intend to allow Alexa to access my local/itunes library?

  • 30 November 2017
  • 12 replies
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DVanO
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There's a lot of "not currently available" and "this is still a beta release" posted on this subject. But what I want to know is, WILL Alexa ultimately be able to access my LOCAL music library? I mean, is Sonos and Google actively working on this feature?

Please throw us a bone...We're still out there you know -- That is, Sonos' original customers. Not everyone gets all their music from Spotify, Pandora etc. When we all first heard about the Alexa integration, we got excited with the thought of accessing our personal music libraries via voice commands. Understanding the technology challenges at hand, we just want to know if this is ultimately still a goal. Won't even hold you to it if the tech hurdles prove too great to overcome. Thank You!
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Best answer by Keith N 30 November 2017, 22:07

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12 replies

Chris
Userlevel 7
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I do not foresee alexa being able to ever access local music.
Respect the Queue (1)Move (2)Beam (1)ARC (1)SonosOne (1)Playbar (4)Play5 (4)Play1 (3)Play3 (1)Port (2)Connect (1)Connect:Amp (3)Sonos Amp (1)Sub + (9) Echo + Smartthings
Keith N
Userlevel 7
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Hello there, DVanO. Thanks for reaching out about this. I am happy to clear up any confusion about this. Based on the Alexa support article here, Amazon Alexa by itself cannot access your personal local music library. You would need to upload your music to your library on Amazon and then stream it through Alexa.

When the feature becomes natively available through Alexa, we can then start to take a look at its implementation on Sonos. Until then, I can forward this as a feature request to the team for visibility. Thanks again for the feedback!
DVanO
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Yes, please do "forward it for visibility" Keith. I'm encouraged that you say "When.." and not "If..." -- especially as it appears that Sonos allows Alexa (via a "skill") some level of control, Unfortunately, otherwise uploading to Amazon and maintaining a second very large library of private music would be too laborious and costly to justify simple voice control/recognition.

For both Sonos and Alexa -- the combination would truly would be a "killer app."
DVanO
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Chris: "I do not foresee alexa being able to ever access local music."

Chris, why do you feel that way? Is there a strategic/business-related impediment? Technologically, my music library, Alexa and Sonos are all using the same network. To me it seems that if the parties want them to communicate, they can and will -- and I don't see why a music libary index MUST be uploaded to some central server, if it's already right there on the same network...?
D
I want to add my request to DVanO's. I love my Sonos setup with Play:1's but listen to a lot of local music and am very disappointed to find that my new Sonos One won't play it via voice control. Uploading to Amazon seems like a big project that really shouldn't be necessary.
Chris
Userlevel 7
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Alexa would have to go that direction and they are very web centric not local network centered. They are all for uploading your collection to cloud not dealing with local libraries. Sonos isn’t going to be able to do anything to access it and even if they could they have made a strong push away from local music (what updates have we ever seen recently to local library handling..none). Just direction of things at Sonos and amazon lack of local focus.
Respect the Queue (1)Move (2)Beam (1)ARC (1)SonosOne (1)Playbar (4)Play5 (4)Play1 (3)Play3 (1)Port (2)Connect (1)Connect:Amp (3)Sonos Amp (1)Sub + (9) Echo + Smartthings
Keith N
Userlevel 7
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Yes, please do "forward it for visibility" Keith. I'm encouraged that you say "When.." and not "If..." -- especially as it appears that Sonos allows Alexa (via a "skill") some level of control, Unfortunately, otherwise uploading to Amazon and maintaining a second very large library of private music would be too laborious and costly to justify simple voice control/recognition.

For both Sonos and Alexa -- the combination would truly would be a "killer app."
Keep in mind, I cannot speak for Amazon and what their pipeline looks like. The proverbial "ball" is in their "court".
DVanO
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I understand Keith. And, regarding "The proverbial "ball" is in their "court".-- I might expect that, as there appears to be a technology hurdle to explain this lack of function, that if BOTH companies worked together to find a solution one might be more easily achieved.

Example: Sonos drivers could be modified to add extra control "hooks" that allow Alexa to access the music library locally. And Amazon updates Alexa to be able to reach down into the network and pull that information directly. That sort of thing. I should think Sonos would want that functionality for its customers. And also Amazon...Oh...I get it now. The ball really is in their court IF their primary interest is in promoting their Amazon music services. I certainly hope that's not the case.
Airgetlam
The issue that might be hiding in the corner is the "security" issue of allowing "any particular company" access to your local network for processing of data.

There are those who would cry foul saying that at that point, they'd be not only parsing your music titles, but all of your tax returns, your bank information, pictures of your children, etc.

I think it's more technically not an issue than it is legally. In fact, there are already systems that do this kind of thing (think Steam, a gaming service, or Blizzard, who look at your hard drive and parse what files are there, in order to patch them). So the technology exists, in some forms. I think it's more an issue of the fact that it's much more of a unique to the individual, rather than a "the library already exists, and we're just scanning to copy things to you, rather than actually parsing what's there" which is the hurdle.

But frankly, that already exists too, with multiple online data storage and back up companies. It's just that they don't really parse the individual data, just take it and copy it.

It'll be interesting at some point. And I'm one of those who will be excited. 98% of my listening comes from my NAS.

I do think one of the things that they'd have to think about is storage for the data. If Sonos is going to keep track of my data, I suspect that they don't really want to keep my music files, just a list, much like they do with the data on the speakers. It's just a list of pointers. So I could easily see a similar function like the current "update my library" which takes all of the necessary data and pushes it to (the currently non-existent) cloud servers of Sonos, for my system to access.

I think there's land mines all over the place here, both from a development and legal perspective. It will be interesting to see how it resolves.
Bruce
K
On the ultimately question: It is like the economists say - in the long term it doesn't matter, we are all going to be dead anyway. The equivalent that both Amazon/Sonos may be waiting for is "dead = no more use of NAS, just streaming services". As it is, over a year ago, Sonos claimed that less than 10% of its use is for local NAS listening.

And by not offering this feature, 10% to "close to zero" will be accelerated, if my experience is any guide. Whenever I do use Dot in the limited way I am allowed to just now, my preference is for Amazon Music, being the only one available to me where I can initiate music play, not just do the volume control thing. And, Amazon would also hope that this acceleration results in more Amazon Music subscription revenue for itself. How else to differentiate the music service?
DVanO
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Airgetlam: Yes, landmines galore. Good point. Fortunately as you pointed out there are already myriad other examples of software and services trolling our networks for one reason or another. Crucially, with our permission. Otherwise it's malware.

I don't think this works well if Amazon has to maintain separate "cloud" lists of everyone's song content and locations. That really is a serious landmine. Instead, Sonos will ideally offer local access to Alexa, or vice versa, right on the network.

Alexa also does not need to have access to an entire network. Most people know where their music is stored. Just as one sets a location pointer to Sonos' software, one could do the same for Alexa on their smartphone's Alexa app.

Kumar makes another good point...why do it if only 10% of Sonos users still maintain their own personal music libraries? Will the Spotifies take over the music industry? It's an argument to be made, for sure. But I would argue that capabilities like this drive sales -- similar to how premium features are offered in automobiles even though not all or even most opt for them. The nicer features drive sales.

Anyway, for many of us the music subscription services simply do not carry the music we listen to.
K
It is also a question of priorities. It isn't as if voice is working fine for the claimed 90% - there are many things to be done there, and bugs to be fixed. Even mic sensitivity is an issue that now appears to be a complex one. Then there is the keeping up challenge with Amazon as it rolls out voice globally, another area Sonos is struggling to keep pace with. And of course the UI changes that have added to the load. So there are enough fires to be put out for 90% of the market.

There aren't even enough Sonos resources to answer questions posed here; there is a noticeable drop off. So when will Sonos find the time with an Amazon that could not care less about the 10%, to get more than voice control on volume for local NAS? Anyone's guess. I am not holding my breath.

I have over 20,000 tracks of music in my local NAS and much of it is jazz and blues. I haven't found a noticeable lack of the same tracks in my Apple/Google subscriptions so the switch has been, very largely, painless. As to latest pop songs that there is some market for at home, nothing seems to be missing, else I would hear about it.
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