Laughably buggy and poor Alexa and Sonos integration

  • 5 October 2017
  • 28 replies
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28 replies

Working perfectly for me, fully meeting expectations. Only issue I've had so far is when i ask it to play albums that don't actually exist on Amazon Music. For example, asked Alexa to play the album Playboys by Art Pepper and Chet Baker. Sadly, Amazon only has it as a 2-fer with another album, so had to resort to the Sonos app to kick that off. It's been finding and playing most of the albums i ask for otherwise, to the Living Room or Office. Pretty slick integration, Sonos!

Oh man, are you kidding? First of all, I want to stream my personal music, not some 56kb crappy Amazon stream from a very limited collection.

You're kidding, right?
Damn, some people cannot be satisfied. You were GIVEN a new FREE functionality with your existing Sonos speakers, and you find every which way to complain that Sonos F'd it up. So then go back to using the Sonos the "old way" and pretend like it never rolled out. Will you be happy then?

Oh, and please tell us which alternative is out there to get Wifi whole home audio that has perfect Alexa integration? Any? No? Ok.


Whoa! Why so emotional? Are you a Sonos or Amazon employee who can't deal with honest feedback? Otherwise, I can't see why you're acting like people are talking about you personally.
I’m with Chicks here, having learned the Alexa voice commands for Sonos a long long time ago and used it for many months now, I think the Alexa service works great with Sonos. I have Alexa and Sonos in most of the main rooms of my home and there are no complaints from me.

I can play my own music library 25000+ tracks and playlists, because I have uploaded the lot to my Amazon cloud. Apparently the required annual subscription service for that, ends sometime next year, but Amazon say that I can keep my own music in the cloud indefinitely, whilst I continue to subscribe to one of their music streaming services... I presently pay my streaming subscription annually too, as that works out to less than £80 per year. I used to spend far more than that on CD's when I was younger.

In fact I now subscribe to both Amazon Unlimited and Spotify Premium and use the free Google Play Service too, which also holds my music library.

I do have my own music stored on a local NAS box aswell and even that music can be voice controlled, once I have initially loaded a playlist to a room (or grouped rooms) queue.

People here can moan/groan all they like, but the Alexa and Sonos integration really does work well for me and the whole family.

Friends, family and visitors to the house seem to love it and they particularly like how I have associated some different room 'mood lighting' using Philips hue to saved genre-based Playlists on the 'My Sonos' (favourites) tab, using other Alexa Skills, like Yonomi.

I also use the tvOS App called TunesMap that 'works with Sonos’ and it automatically identifies the music that is streaming on a chosen Sonos Speaker/or Spotify Connected device, and displays terrific Art/Culture on the TV screen in a room, in the context of any Artist that is currently playing. It’s nice to see the Album Art and other scenes change as the music changes.

So in addition to the Alexa voice controlled music via Sonos speakers in a room the guests experience different mood lighting and artistic displays on screen... All using some very simple and basic voice commands.

I think Sonos have made a great decision here to enter the voice controlled smart-home market. It presents some great opportunities both for Sonos and their forward-looking customers.