How to get Alexa to tell Sonos to access my Local Music
Userlevel 1
All my music is stored on my computer, I don't use streaming services. The Sonos app is able to access my music and playlists, but using Alexa, all I can find are commands to access streaming services. How do I use Alexa to tell Sonos to access the music on my computer?
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Because all Alexa processing is done in the cloud, and unlike streaming services, there is no index of your local music available in the cloud, nor any existing way for Alexa to query local music. Sonos and Amazon would have to allow for storing a local index in the Amazon cloud, or develop a sophisticated back and forth between Sonos and Alexa to enable Alexa to query Sonos about its index, all while maintaining a short response time when requesting music. Not at all easy, nor (I imagine) a priority for Amazon at this time.
Sonos does index your music files from your library, and I imagine the 'cloud' is where this index is kept, and possibly a local copy too, this index must now be shared with Amazon, or at least Alexa has access to this index.
I created my own mix, with my name as the artist and Alexa still knows what song/artist is playing from my music library when asked, and obviously, I'm not listed as an artist on Amazon music or any other music service.
So Alexa clearly can and does query local music, at least an index of it.
This is encouraging on the one hand, as I imagine it wouldn't be too much work to allow local music to be a source that Alexa can play from, but also worrying, as allowing people to listen to their own locally stored music would negate the need for paying to stream music from Amazon etc, so not really in their interest to do so.
I just hope that this isn't a sign of things to come with Sonos, and that local music playback won't be phased out any time.
Yes, they 'MAY' have done that but that is supposition.
I'm querying the assertion that the index would need to be held in the cloud or that it's technically sophisticated to allow control of the local index and am trying to understand why.
I'm querying the assertion that the index would need to be held in the cloud or that it's technically sophisticated to allow control of the local index and am trying to understand why.
The other reason why this isn't possible at this time is that Amazon may have put in a hopefully short term veto to this to see if they pick up Amazon Music subscriptions from us.
While I would have no issue with Sonos having a copy of my index in the cloud, I'm not sure it's necessary?
Currently you can issue a voice command to Alexa (at that point it doesn't even know if Amazon Unlimited has the song?) and Alexa with translate that into a command and will play the song if it has it or will tell you it can't find the song and won't play it.
Why can't that just work with your local index (and considering you would know the contents of your own library, maybe with even more success?)?
Issue the command to Alexa and it tells Sonos what to play. If it finds it cool. If not it fails.
Currently you can issue a voice command to Alexa (at that point it doesn't even know if Amazon Unlimited has the song?) and Alexa with translate that into a command and will play the song if it has it or will tell you it can't find the song and won't play it.
Why can't that just work with your local index (and considering you would know the contents of your own library, maybe with even more success?)?
Issue the command to Alexa and it tells Sonos what to play. If it finds it cool. If not it fails.
Like everyone else Sonos was wrong footed by Alexa/Amazon, and chose to catch up by combining with Amazon instead of competing via an in house developed solution. Probably the right thing to do in the short term because they lack the scale needed to quickly do so, that which Amazon/Apple/Google have. Long term? I doubt anyone can predict.
Having tied a leg to Alexa it now must not be easy to march to the beat of a different drummer, at least in the short term. That said, it is only the first step of starting music play from the local library that isn't possible: all others including asking Alexa what is playing, are.
I bought the Amazon dot at half price anticipating that I would have voice control over my library.
Very disappointed.
I have owned a Sonos system for 6 years and run it in four rooms. I expected that I could ask Sonos to transfer my music requests from room to room. I expected that I could ask it to play a specific album from my library. I expected that it would be implemented to the high standards that Sonos has provided in the past. I did not expect Sonos to be brought low by Amazon.
I do not wish to stream music. I am retired. I have spent thousands of pounds over the years building a music collection and do not wish to change it.
Please, please Sonos find a way to improve this system. It is obvious that it is not in Amazon's interest to improve your systems.
Very disappointed.
I have owned a Sonos system for 6 years and run it in four rooms. I expected that I could ask Sonos to transfer my music requests from room to room. I expected that I could ask it to play a specific album from my library. I expected that it would be implemented to the high standards that Sonos has provided in the past. I did not expect Sonos to be brought low by Amazon.
I do not wish to stream music. I am retired. I have spent thousands of pounds over the years building a music collection and do not wish to change it.
Please, please Sonos find a way to improve this system. It is obvious that it is not in Amazon's interest to improve your systems.
I'm no expert, but isn't that logic the same as saying Shazam can tell me what's playing but not necessarily what's on my computer? I truly have no clue how Alexa figures out what's playing from a local source
I too would like to have Alexa initiate play from my NAS, not just do the subsequent stuff. But when I think about it as a layman, how it figures out what is playing from my NAS is in the realm of magic. But then I am easily impressed.
If *all* processing is done in the cloud and there is no way to query local music then how can Alexa know what is playing on a Sonos speaker when playback from the local library is initiated outside of Alexa control and not via any service Alexa has knowledge of?
Clearly there is a way for Alexa to query the local speaker to get what is playing from it, and if it can do that it's not unreasonable to expect that Alexa could also query and process the library index held on each speaker as well...
I'm no expert, but isn't that logic the same as saying Shazam can tell me what's playing but not necessarily what's on my computer? I truly have no clue how Alexa figures out what's playing from a local source, but it could be something sent from the local system's player as it does from MP3 in automobile USB systems? (yes, I know USB in the car is old-school!)
Not unreasonable at all. I never mentioned anything about it being reasonable. Matter of fact, it is quite reasonable for a user to expect this type of functionality. Certainly I did, and you can search my past posts to prove it.
However, reasonable or not, that particular status has no bearing on a status of not yet implemented, more difficult than the current implementation, more man-hours to implement, not high in priority, or possibly even not in the plans.
Oh and the sigh? It was to your "not ready for prime time" comment. It's a freaking beta! By very definition it is not ready for prime time!
However, reasonable or not, that particular status has no bearing on a status of not yet implemented, more difficult than the current implementation, more man-hours to implement, not high in priority, or possibly even not in the plans.
Oh and the sigh? It was to your "not ready for prime time" comment. It's a freaking beta! By very definition it is not ready for prime time!
If *all* processing is done in the cloud and there is no way to query local music then how can Alexa know what is playing on a Sonos speaker when playback from the local library is initiated outside of Alexa control and not via any service Alexa has knowledge of?
Clearly there is a way for Alexa to query the local speaker to get what is playing from it, and if it can do that it's not unreasonable to expect that Alexa could also query and process the library index held on each speaker as well...
Sigh.
Userlevel 1
This obviously has a ways to go before it's ready for prime time. You're basically saying that currently Sonos is nothing more than a really expensive set of external speakers for Alexa. For it to do what I want, Alexa doesn't need to have a way to query my local music or have a sophisticated back and forth between it and Sonos. It just needs to pass the request off to Sonos. "Alexa tell Sonos to play My Favorites in Living Room". Alexa doesn't need to know anything in request, other than to pass the command to my Sonos and potential receive a response back if Sonos is unable to do what is asked.
Because all Alexa processing is done in the cloud, and unlike streaming services, there is no index of your local music available in the cloud, nor any existing way for Alexa to query local music. Sonos and Amazon would have to allow for storing a local index in the Amazon cloud, or develop a sophisticated back and forth between Sonos and Alexa to enable Alexa to query Sonos about its index, all while maintaining a short response time when requesting music. Not at all easy, nor (I imagine) a priority for Amazon at this time.
So the integration is fairly useless i would say. Pull your finger sonos. If i can access my libraries from my iphone why not alexa??
Local libraries are not supported at this time for initializing playback. You can start playback via the Sonos app, then control play, pause, skip, previous, volume level, and ask what is playing via Alexa.
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