Will alexa skill be able to play from my music library?
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Im fairly sure the beta testers will have mentioned spotify, napster etc and locally stored music.
Its also my personal opinion that Sonos/Amazon have more than enough resource and technical ability to make these work. I choose to believe (whether accused of being a conspiracy theorist or not), that these are deliberate omissions owing to the fact that Amazon have their own music streaming service and the ability to host peoples own music libraries, for a fee of course.
Once amazon and sonos see that the orders coming in from the existing userbase for both thee the new hardware and the amazon streaming/storage offerings are starting to level out or tail off, then I believe thats when we will see spotify (and others) and local play becoming available.
Why would they offer people the ability to avoid the music storage membership fee right off the bat. They have free trials on the music service too, so the lack of spotify may prompt people to take up this, and who knows people may choose to leave spotify and go with amazon prime music unlimited after the free trial.
So imho the lack of spotify and local play is deliberate to at least force some people to try out the alternatives.
Its also my personal opinion that Sonos/Amazon have more than enough resource and technical ability to make these work. I choose to believe (whether accused of being a conspiracy theorist or not), that these are deliberate omissions owing to the fact that Amazon have their own music streaming service and the ability to host peoples own music libraries, for a fee of course.
Once amazon and sonos see that the orders coming in from the existing userbase for both thee the new hardware and the amazon streaming/storage offerings are starting to level out or tail off, then I believe thats when we will see spotify (and others) and local play becoming available.
Why would they offer people the ability to avoid the music storage membership fee right off the bat. They have free trials on the music service too, so the lack of spotify may prompt people to take up this, and who knows people may choose to leave spotify and go with amazon prime music unlimited after the free trial.
So imho the lack of spotify and local play is deliberate to at least force some people to try out the alternatives.
Or maybe . . . just maybe . . . local library support is a lot harder to implement than streaming services, and Spotify is later than Amazon Music because Amazon created the API; so they would have a leg up on any other service.
In other news, Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK, Neil Armstrong actually walked on the moon, and Elvis is currently worm food.
In other news, Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK, Neil Armstrong actually walked on the moon, and Elvis is currently worm food.
Its also my personal opinion that Sonos/Amazon have more than enough resource and technical ability to make these work.
Perhaps, but I think you also have to factor in that Sonos was also working on developing the Sonos One and rebuilding their app at this time. Their resources are not unlimited. Amazon/Alexa has been rather busy with new products and features as well. Without inner knowledge of how all this is happening, you could make an argument either way.
I choose to believe (whether accused of being a conspiracy theorist or not), that these are deliberate omissions owing to the fact that Amazon have their own music streaming service and the ability to host peoples own music libraries, for a fee of course.
That is possible, but there are other reasons as well. Some reasons we can guess at, others we just don't know.
Once amazon and sonos see that the orders coming in from the existing userbase for both thee the new hardware and the amazon streaming/storage offerings are starting to level out or tail off, then I believe thats when we will see spotify (and others) and local play becoming available.
Actually, I think the biggest factor for pushing change and additional features is the competition. It's not a coincidence that Amazon and Google came up with improved sound quality after Apple Homepod was announced. Or that Google and Amazon both have calling features. So I'm betting the biggest motivator of getting more features with Sonos/Alexa is more features with Sonos/Google or Sonos/Apple.
Why would they offer people the ability to avoid the music storage membership fee right off the bat. They have free trials on the music service too, so the lack of spotify may prompt people to take up this, and who knows people may choose to leave spotify and go with amazon prime music unlimited after the free trial.
I honestly don't think it's really that much about the storage fee. I don't think it's a coincidence that Alexa came out with multiroom before integrating with Sonos. They are good with giving people the option of Sonos, but perhaps they don't want you be able to do anything with Sonos that you couldn't do with echos alone.
That isn't all of it though. It's a complex evolving market where you compete with your partners. Hard to really see motivations.
So imho the lack of spotify and local play is deliberate to at least force some people to try out the alternatives.
Maybe, but how many of these Sonos user who want to do voice control already had echos and tried out the alternatives already?
We are told that support for Spotify is on the way. I have no reason to doubt that. Is it reasonable to assume that Amazon wanted its own service to be supported first? Yes. Is this a "conspiracy"? No, it is a "business model".
Just adding my two cents that we need local music library AND Sonos playlist support. Hopefully before Christmas. Grouping is ok but can be done via Alexa. Getting use to the system but not being able to play my Music Library and Playlists is a real showstopper
After setting up Alexa and Sonos I can control Tunein Radio in various rooms with reasonable success; however, the as others have already mentioned access to my Sonos local music library (which I keep on OneDrive) is the key feature that I would like to see included. Like many others I don't subscribe to steaming music services.
With the announcement of Alexa integration into the Play:1 it would be likely that this functionality isn't far off for those of us that have an Echo, etc. It will be interesting to see what Alexa functionality the new Play:1 has and hopefully that should provide an indication of what's to come.
With the announcement of Alexa integration into the Play:1 it would be likely that this functionality isn't far off for those of us that have an Echo, etc. It will be interesting to see what Alexa functionality the new Play:1 has and hopefully that should provide an indication of what's to come.
Is it not possible to add your local music to your Amazon Music Playlists and then play those via Alex/Sonos?
You can upload/match your music with Amazon and play it that way with full Alexa support. I believe it is $25/year for 250,000 tracks, but there may be a free allowance with Prime that I'm not aware of.
It just seems that in Sonos' zeal to stay relevant in the market they had to succumb to Amazon's will to make Sonos a better sounding Alexa speaker rather than give Sonos voice control. We waited over a year for this with the expectation that Sonos would get a voice. Instead we have a Sonos that wants to be just like Alexa. Too bad. I expect competitive pressure will change that.
Stay relevant? I don't ever really look at sales and marketing figures, but it's my understanding that Sonos is doing a little better than staying relevant. Granted, it's pretty clear that a wireless speaker system that doesn't allow for voice control will become obsolete in the next few years. Sonos is really the first multi-room system to add voice control, at least with high quality speakers and multiple room configurations.
I do agree that it's likely that Sonos could not get everything it wanted from an integration with Alexa. And it's not as if Sonos has not stated that more features are to come.
We waited over a year for this with the expectation that Sonos would get a voice. Instead we have a Sonos that wants to be just like Alexa.
Hoh? Sonos has always said they were going to integrate with Alexa, not create their own voice assistant. I don't know why you were expecting anything different. Even then, Sonos's feature set are very much different from Alexa as far as quality, multi-room, and selection of services. No one could say that Sonos is just a copy cat of Alexa.
Absolutely, and the fact that Sonos has stated that they want to work with Google as well is evidence that they think that as well.
At this point this looks more a limitation of Alexa integration/licensing, rather than a Sonos shortcoming. I bought my first Sonos component in 1997, and 11 years later it's still meeting my needs. But I bought a couple Alexa Dots in anticipation of voice control of my music library, just to enjoy the gimmick. Didn't happen, no big deal-I'll gladly jettison the Dots and control with my phone. Now, on to more important things-earbuds or headphones that let me enjoy my Sonos playlists throughout the house.
Its also my personal opinion that Sonos/Amazon have more than enough resource and technical ability to make these work. I choose to believe (whether accused of being a conspiracy theorist or not), that these are deliberate omissions owing to the fact that Amazon have their own music streaming service and the ability to host peoples own music libraries, for a fee of course.
Once amazon and sonos see that the orders coming in from the existing userbase for both thee the new hardware and the amazon streaming/storage offerings are starting to level out or tail off, then I believe thats when we will see spotify (and others) and local play becoming available.
Why would they offer people the ability to avoid the music storage membership fee right off the bat. They have free trials on the music service too, so the lack of spotify may prompt people to take up this, and who knows people may choose to leave spotify and go with amazon prime music unlimited after the free trial.
So imho the lack of spotify and local play is deliberate to at least force some people to try out the alternatives.
Agree. It makes sense in that what is in it for amazon otherwise? Other than all the user data they will nine by people using Alexa that they can sell on or use. Before long you will not be able to purchase bay media and instead will only rent it.
Also, any Alexa device on your account can use basic controls, such as play, pause, volume, and skip, on your Sonos players. This works for all services and music on Sonos, started through the Sonos app.
We don't have any specifics on what's up next, or if local library will be working for the future, but the skill will be improving over time, so you never know what might get added next.
Hey Ryan. Long time listener (2005 convert from Bang and Olufsen) first time caller... ;-> I know you guys are probably up to your ears but I want to be sure to double-down on the comments of many others on this forum.
Notwithstanding the commentary of the smart-mouthed trolls on this thread (you know who you are) -- this is a big problem for many of us. The my library function is important and has been the basis of Sonos from day one. We've generally curated our libraries with dozens of playlists, favorites, etc. that are not replicable (without a metric butt-ton of effort) on cloud services. We've chosen Sonos as our platform and used it as such.
The beauty of Sonos has been that it is music system agnostic - but the basis has always been the support of a local music library. I'd be surprised if you didn't find a majority of your users still see that as one of the primary differentiators of Sonos. In fact... once the dot launched, our curated libraries were one of the primary reasons to stick-it-out with Sonos rather than moving to a fully Amazon solution.
If other users are like me, we don't really care about timing, just don't be cagey about it - no frustrated user wants to hear "it will get better but we don't know how and we don't know when". We all understand the challenges; push through them, climb over them, go around them.
I probably won't check back - too may trolls on this thread already, just wanted to voice my opinion as a dedicated and long time Sonos supporter. Thanks for listening.
Cheers, Jens.
Thanks for sharing, Jens! We love getting the feedback and we'll keep sharing with the team so they know what people are asking for. You can use voice to control what's currently playing, just not start playback from an unqueued local library.
There is no doubt that any reasonable thinking person would expect this integration to play your local music library whatever the releases say. Are they mad? It can't be a technical issue surely, purely to fill the coffers. I have a CD collection going back to Brothers in Arms around 1980 and a Sonos system that plays them (ripped of course). I use basic Napster but why soak the Internet if much of what I want is locally stored and setup in my playlists. Seriously annoying. If you only pay for streaming services you have to do that FOR LIFE if you want music.
Seeing that the Alexa operates in the Cloud, not on your local storage, it most certainly is a technical issue. That being, Sonos would have to develop scheme in which the index which is currently housed on your Sonos players would now be housed in the cloud. This is obviously a bit more complicated than a music service, which is already accessible via the cloud.
As to the "purely to fill the coffers" accusation, Sonos offers all the playback options for local music as they do for the fully supported streaming options, except one - initializing playback. Pause, Play, Skip, Previous, Volume Control, even "Alexa, what is playing on (room name)" all work for the "unsupported" services like local music, Napster, Slacker, etc. If this implementation truly were ""purely to fill the coffers", why offer every benefit of voice control except initializing playback (which coincidentally, for local music, is the one function which requires the full redesign of the architecture stated above)? It simply doesn't add up.
I don't really get that it's a cloud issue but I admit I'm not a'cloud' developer. Assuming that you have to instruct the local device to play from some source, sure via The Cloud, then I would assume that the local Sonos system interprets the request and drives the selection, configuring and playing of the source. The source would probably be an abstracted object. Ok agreed that once started it can be controlled. Play is quite a key command I'm sure you would agree and if I'm sitting in my cosy chair I might like to just use that command. It makes the streaming services better integrated and might point you in that direction. At least that's one way of adding it up. And to be fair I'm not sure why we expect all this to come for free but it is still frustrating.
Fully agree with jgatie regarding that there are technical reasons why voice control does not currently work with local libraries. Several of us on here have put in the time to actually think about how all the integration works, as implemented, and have come to the conclusion that there are significant technical differences. Sonos staff have confirmed, in a broad sense, that this is the way it works.
I don't think that means that making a profit, for Sonos and Amazon, are completely irrelevant, I just can't conclude, at this point any way, that the Amazon/Sonos integration isn't enabling local libraries and all the music services Sonos provides purely for monetary reasons.
Out of curiosity, is any one bothered by the fact that neither Amazon, Google, or Apple (I think) can play your local files natively through their voice assistant devices?
I don't think that means that making a profit, for Sonos and Amazon, are completely irrelevant, I just can't conclude, at this point any way, that the Amazon/Sonos integration isn't enabling local libraries and all the music services Sonos provides purely for monetary reasons.
Out of curiosity, is any one bothered by the fact that neither Amazon, Google, or Apple (I think) can play your local files natively through their voice assistant devices?
All logic for track selection is collected via Alexa, then processed via the Cloud, then specific play commands are sent to Sonos. In order for Alexa to process initialization of play, it needs to know what tracks are available via that source. For streaming sources, it is very easy, you simply query that source. Even better, Amazon already has this functionality available to Alexa via its own devices and supported services, it merely needs to pass the play commands over to Sonos.
However, local libraries require more work. You would either need to house a complete local index in the cloud, or you would need some type of client/server relationship between Sonos and Alexa to allow Alexa to query the local index. Either scheme is a major shift from the current architecture. Now could the priorities of what gets implemented and when conveniently line up with financial interests of one or both parties? Sure, that is often the case in any endeavor, for every company does best that which it has already done. But saying the reason local libraries are not supported is "purely to fill the coffers" is not only naive, it is demonstrably incorrect; being there is partial support for local libraries, and the one piece not supported is clearly the most technologically challenging.
Perhaps you could expand on what logic is handled and processed in The Cloud. I would expect: Alexa very cleverly interprets my voice in The Cloud and translates to a command (validating along the way) . You can see this on the Alexa website of course e.g "Add butter to shopping list". Then via the internet/cloud this command is sent to Sonos. Play Adele 21 on Kitchen. Sonos decomposes this (maybe) and plays via a source as if I had locally clicked. Default source could/should be local. Varying degrees of smartness could be used in the cloud if the music is not found where chosen. The integration is surely creating a client on Sonos that can connect to/work with Amazon/Alexa in The Cloud. Now one snag is that Sonos internal searching capabilities are not strong so maybe this is a limitation. Always surprised by that but maybe this is a key problem. It's not necessary to say I am naive or that the idea is demonstrably incorrect . Money is quite a driver and my comment did offer one scenario that could be true, weak I admit. If you could add some substance to 'clearly the most technologically challenging' like exactly what part is difficult then I would like to hear it. That's not meant as a criticism, I'd like to understand it.
Poster melvimbe did a far better summation than I ever could right here:
https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/sonos-alexa-and-local-nas-stored-music-6791479/index1.html
As to the accuracy of his guesses, Ryan S from Sonos says:
https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/sonos-alexa-and-local-nas-stored-music-6791479/index1.html
I'm just guessing, kind of trying to reverse engineer the process, but I think it's going to be rather difficult. There are several different hints to suggest that Amazon/Alexa is completely in charge of determine what music will play when you make a voice command. I think it goes something like this.
1 - echo hears you
2- echo sends voice to Alexa servers
3 - Alexa servers translate voice to text
4 - Alexa servers process the request, determining what music to play on what speakers
5 - Alexa sends request to Sonos cloud.
6 - Sonos cloud sends request to your speakers.
I think step 4 is the key. Alexa has to know what music you want to play BEFORE it sends the request to the sonos cloud. It never sends an 'unknown' music request to the sonos cloud. So you may have a favorites playlist on Sonos, that Sonos knows what to do with, but since Alexa doesn't know what that is, it won't process it.
So for this to change, either Alexa needs to change to send unknown request to sonos, Alexa needs to know more about your sonos setup, or the two need to have a deeper back and forth exchange/communication so that Sonos can tell Alexa that it knows what that is.
Personally, I think changing this is a long way off. It requires Amazon/Alexa to change, and I don't think they are too motivated to do so.
BTW, some of the hints I see...
- You can't request any music on Sonos that you couldn't do on Amazon speakers.
- You can't give any commands (play, pause, volume control) on Sonos speakers that you couldn't do on Echos (like group, ungroup, line in source, etc)
- Alexa tracks what music you requested on it's 'cards' and in the history for that speaker. It could not do that if it didn't understand exactly what you requested.
- There are features from Sonos existing API that are not present with the interface with Alexa.
I would hazard to guess that Sonos is doing just about everything that it can do on it's side of the fence, and Amazon is the bottleneck. I wouldn't expect to see too many new features come across unless Amazon wants to do add the features. That could be because it benefits them, or because competition forces them to do something they don't exactly want to do.
So I think we will see echo's linked to specific sonos zones soon, because Amazon would want to build that feature, they would do the same for lights so users don't have to say the specific name of a light when they are in the same room. I think we will see playing form NAS or something like that if Sonos builds an interface with Google that allows that. Amazon may be pushed to do the same to stay competitive.
As to the accuracy of his guesses, Ryan S from Sonos says:
In short, melvimbe's analysis is pretty darn good, and on point. There would be work needing to be done on both sides of things for local libraries. There needs to be a cloud listing of your local tracks available when you'd want to listen to music, also with the knowledge of where or when to tell Sonos where to go. You can expect this Alexa integration to get better over time, we're constantly working on it. But I don't have any specifics on if or when we might get local libraries included. For those new to the thread, you can still use Alexa to control what's currently playing from any source, you just can't add something to the queue or start playing from certain sources with Alexa.
Fair enough, if that's how they do it but doesn't seem very tidy. Just raises more queries than it answers so I'm going to leave it there. But I bet there are plenty of customers dissatisfied with the result.
And many of us that are pleased with version 1, and looking forward to further versions. V1 is always the hardest, adding on may be difficult, but at least they have a running platform that answers many of the basic questions.
I happen to think they've done well. And I am 99% of the time using my NAS as the source of my music.
I happen to think they've done well. And I am 99% of the time using my NAS as the source of my music.
For me, as a Sonos owner for a decade now, there are two primary problems with this release.
#1 - A large community of product users use Sonos independent of the internet, because, it was a system released prior to the majority of streaming services, and certainly before any of them became useable.
As such, the idea that they have built integration with Alexa (granted a web based service) but have now (in beta at least) leveraged all the benefits of the voice capability to streamable services only totally ignores what is undoubtedly the core ownership of the product, and certainly the most loyal. It kinda borders on the ridiculous to be frank.
#2 - Sonos was designed (in part) to be a service to allow you to control all of your local music (sheesh I still have a CR100, all that could do was my local music at the time) and for many, many, MANY years that was it's entire selling point of the product until such a time as streaming became more accessible and popular and then it became "play every song on the earth" and random hyperbole like that.
So, you build a massive user base of people who have ripped and laboriously ID3 tagged their music libraries, and then you offer them the ability to voice control their system - you tease it for a year or more - and then when you release it, you do not provide the functionality that they have primarily used the system for?
Whomever in here is saying that makes sense is vastly deluded as how easy it is to alienate a consumer base.
What's sh*tty about this whole thing is, no-one knew Sonos were going to do anything with Amazon. The ECHO and DOT were out and ok, some people might have been talking about it and maybe some people on here were saying "hey, Sonos, Alexa, hmm?, hmmmm?" but that would have been it.
It's dangerous from a companycustomer relationship standpoint to open the door to questions like "did you only announce this so people would go and buy ECHO's and DOT's thus helping Amazon sell their product when Google was hot on their heels".
Because, it wouldn't be hard to make an argument for that when you consider it was Sonos who decided to announce Alexa functionality and they did it in a way which is totally opposed to the very thing the majority of their consumers use. Why do that?, why not just say nothing if it's so difficult to add local library functionality, until you figure out a way to do it?, and then announce :?
To me, this from the press release that still sits on the Sonos website is misleading:
"Sonos owners with an Alexa-enabled device such as an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot will soon be able to use Amazon’s popular Alexa service to control their Sonos sound system"
That part of the sentence is not true today.
Now sure, the press release goes on to say:
"Simply ask Alexa to play your music from Amazon Music, Spotify and more and it will flow to any group of Sonos speakers in the home. By integrating Alexa into their Sonos sound systems, owners can use their voice to play, pause, skip, control volume and more."
But aside the fact that Spotify isn't available, so that part of the sentence is partially baloney too - the former paragraph infers a myth that the rest of the press release does nothing to dispel.
Read it for yourself > http://press-us.sonos.com/134980-sonos-with-partners-and-industry-leaders-ushers-in-new-era-of-connected-home-listening <
I have always said, as a tech geek and someone that works in the tech industry that my Sonos was the best item of tech I have ever bought, but when a company does stuff like this, they are well on their way to losing people who advocate the brand.
IMHO. A Sonos products key market is not streaming. Very few people are buying Sonos kit costing in the hundreds (and in many cases thousands) of $ to play streamable content when they probably have a TV or a iPhone doc that can do that already. I'd actually be very interested to hear someone from Sonos look at the data of new hardware purchases and tell us what those people are using the product for, because I find it hard to believe that the main and best product feature of Sonos does not remain the local library functionality... and the company would do well to remember that when they decide to release like this.
And just to comment on people saying it's a much harder task than it appears.
I as a local library users of probably 3-4Tb of music, understand that voice recognition of all my ambiguous songs and artists is tough. I get that.
However what I don't get is why the first release doesn't have the ability to play (at the very least) playlists, this would be easy enough to push/send my playlist to my 'room' and then send the eplay] command to, and a simple advisory to make the playlist names 'simple' would be all that's required.
So, I'm sorry, the idea that local library functionality couldn't in any way be made available is hooey to me. Especially when I can ask Alexa to play a song and there's no problem finding a sample version of it in the Amazon library, but I can't play the full high quality file sitting in my local library. That's pretty 😞 😠 to say the least.
Just my 2p.
#1 - A large community of product users use Sonos independent of the internet, because, it was a system released prior to the majority of streaming services, and certainly before any of them became useable.
As such, the idea that they have built integration with Alexa (granted a web based service) but have now (in beta at least) leveraged all the benefits of the voice capability to streamable services only totally ignores what is undoubtedly the core ownership of the product, and certainly the most loyal. It kinda borders on the ridiculous to be frank.
#2 - Sonos was designed (in part) to be a service to allow you to control all of your local music (sheesh I still have a CR100, all that could do was my local music at the time) and for many, many, MANY years that was it's entire selling point of the product until such a time as streaming became more accessible and popular and then it became "play every song on the earth" and random hyperbole like that.
So, you build a massive user base of people who have ripped and laboriously ID3 tagged their music libraries, and then you offer them the ability to voice control their system - you tease it for a year or more - and then when you release it, you do not provide the functionality that they have primarily used the system for?
Whomever in here is saying that makes sense is vastly deluded as how easy it is to alienate a consumer base.
What's sh*tty about this whole thing is, no-one knew Sonos were going to do anything with Amazon. The ECHO and DOT were out and ok, some people might have been talking about it and maybe some people on here were saying "hey, Sonos, Alexa, hmm?, hmmmm?" but that would have been it.
It's dangerous from a companycustomer relationship standpoint to open the door to questions like "did you only announce this so people would go and buy ECHO's and DOT's thus helping Amazon sell their product when Google was hot on their heels".
Because, it wouldn't be hard to make an argument for that when you consider it was Sonos who decided to announce Alexa functionality and they did it in a way which is totally opposed to the very thing the majority of their consumers use. Why do that?, why not just say nothing if it's so difficult to add local library functionality, until you figure out a way to do it?, and then announce :?
To me, this from the press release that still sits on the Sonos website is misleading:
"Sonos owners with an Alexa-enabled device such as an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot will soon be able to use Amazon’s popular Alexa service to control their Sonos sound system"
That part of the sentence is not true today.
Now sure, the press release goes on to say:
"Simply ask Alexa to play your music from Amazon Music, Spotify and more and it will flow to any group of Sonos speakers in the home. By integrating Alexa into their Sonos sound systems, owners can use their voice to play, pause, skip, control volume and more."
But aside the fact that Spotify isn't available, so that part of the sentence is partially baloney too - the former paragraph infers a myth that the rest of the press release does nothing to dispel.
Read it for yourself > http://press-us.sonos.com/134980-sonos-with-partners-and-industry-leaders-ushers-in-new-era-of-connected-home-listening <
I have always said, as a tech geek and someone that works in the tech industry that my Sonos was the best item of tech I have ever bought, but when a company does stuff like this, they are well on their way to losing people who advocate the brand.
IMHO. A Sonos products key market is not streaming. Very few people are buying Sonos kit costing in the hundreds (and in many cases thousands) of $ to play streamable content when they probably have a TV or a iPhone doc that can do that already. I'd actually be very interested to hear someone from Sonos look at the data of new hardware purchases and tell us what those people are using the product for, because I find it hard to believe that the main and best product feature of Sonos does not remain the local library functionality... and the company would do well to remember that when they decide to release like this.
And just to comment on people saying it's a much harder task than it appears.
I as a local library users of probably 3-4Tb of music, understand that voice recognition of all my ambiguous songs and artists is tough. I get that.
However what I don't get is why the first release doesn't have the ability to play (at the very least) playlists, this would be easy enough to push/send my playlist to my 'room' and then send the eplay] command to, and a simple advisory to make the playlist names 'simple' would be all that's required.
So, I'm sorry, the idea that local library functionality couldn't in any way be made available is hooey to me. Especially when I can ask Alexa to play a song and there's no problem finding a sample version of it in the Amazon library, but I can't play the full high quality file sitting in my local library. That's pretty 😞 😠 to say the least.
Just my 2p.
For me, as a Sonos owner for a decade now, there are two primary problems with this release.
#1 - A large community of product users use Sonos independent of the internet, because, it was a system released prior to the majority of streaming services, and certainly before any of them became useable.
As such, the idea that they have built integration with Alexa (granted a web based service) but have now (in beta at least) leveraged all the benefits of the voice capability to streamable services only totally ignores what is undoubtedly the core ownership of the product, and certainly the most loyal. It kinda borders on the ridiculous to be frank.
#2 - Sonos was designed (in part) to be a service to allow you to control all of your local music (sheesh I still have a CR100, all that could do was my local music at the time) and for many, many, MANY years that was it's entire selling point of the product until such a time as streaming became more accessible and popular and then it became "play every song on the earth" and random hyperbole like that.
So, you build a massive user base of people who have ripped and laboriously ID3 tagged their music libraries, and then you offer them the ability to voice control their system - you tease it for a year or more - and then when you release it, you do not provide the functionality that they have primarily used the system for?
Whomever in here is saying that makes sense is vastly deluded as how easy it is to alienate a consumer base.
What's sh*tty about this whole thing is, no-one knew Sonos were going to do anything with Amazon. The ECHO and DOT were out and ok, some people might have been talking about it and maybe some people on here were saying "hey, Sonos, Alexa, hmm?, hmmmm?" but that would have been it.
It's dangerous from a companycustomer relationship standpoint to open the door to questions like "did you only announce this so people would go and buy ECHO's and DOT's thus helping Amazon sell their product when Google was hot on their heels".
Because, it wouldn't be hard to make an argument for that when you consider it was Sonos who decided to announce Alexa functionality and they did it in a way which is totally opposed to the very thing the majority of their consumers use. Why do that?, why not just say nothing if it's so difficult to add local library functionality, until you figure out a way to do it?, and then announce :?
To me, this from the press release that still sits on the Sonos website is misleading:
"Sonos owners with an Alexa-enabled device such as an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot will soon be able to use Amazon’s popular Alexa service to control their Sonos sound system"
That part of the sentence is not true today.
Now sure, the press release goes on to say:
"Simply ask Alexa to play your music from Amazon Music, Spotify and more and it will flow to any group of Sonos speakers in the home. By integrating Alexa into their Sonos sound systems, owners can use their voice to play, pause, skip, control volume and more."
But aside the fact that Spotify isn't available, so that part of the sentence is partially baloney too - the former paragraph infers a myth that the rest of the press release does nothing to dispel.
Read it for yourself > http://press-us.sonos.com/134980-sonos-with-partners-and-industry-leaders-ushers-in-new-era-of-connected-home-listening <
I have always said, as a tech geek and someone that works in the tech industry that my Sonos was the best item of tech I have ever bought, but when a company does stuff like this, they are well on their way to losing people who advocate the brand.
IMHO. A Sonos products key market is not streaming. Very few people are buying Sonos kit costing in the hundreds (and in many cases thousands) of $ to play streamable content when they probably have a TV or a iPhone doc that can do that already. I'd actually be very interested to hear someone from Sonos look at the data of new hardware purchases and tell us what those people are using the product for, because I find it hard to believe that the main and best product feature of Sonos does not remain the local library functionality... and the company would do well to remember that when they decide to release like this.
And just to comment on people saying it's a much harder task than it appears.
I as a local library users of probably 3-4Tb of music, understand that voice recognition of all my ambiguous songs and artists is tough. I get that.
However what I don't get is why the first release doesn't have the ability to play (at the very least) playlists, this would be easy enough to push/send my playlist to my 'room' and then send the eplay] command to, and a simple advisory to make the playlist names 'simple' would be all that's required.
So, I'm sorry, the idea that local library functionality couldn't in any way be made available is hooey to me. Especially when I can ask Alexa to play a song and there's no problem finding a sample version of it in the Amazon library, but I can't play the full high quality file sitting in my local library. That's pretty 😞 😠 to say the least.
Just my 2p.
#1 - A large community of product users use Sonos independent of the internet, because, it was a system released prior to the majority of streaming services, and certainly before any of them became useable.
As such, the idea that they have built integration with Alexa (granted a web based service) but have now (in beta at least) leveraged all the benefits of the voice capability to streamable services only totally ignores what is undoubtedly the core ownership of the product, and certainly the most loyal. It kinda borders on the ridiculous to be frank.
#2 - Sonos was designed (in part) to be a service to allow you to control all of your local music (sheesh I still have a CR100, all that could do was my local music at the time) and for many, many, MANY years that was it's entire selling point of the product until such a time as streaming became more accessible and popular and then it became "play every song on the earth" and random hyperbole like that.
So, you build a massive user base of people who have ripped and laboriously ID3 tagged their music libraries, and then you offer them the ability to voice control their system - you tease it for a year or more - and then when you release it, you do not provide the functionality that they have primarily used the system for?
Whomever in here is saying that makes sense is vastly deluded as how easy it is to alienate a consumer base.
What's sh*tty about this whole thing is, no-one knew Sonos were going to do anything with Amazon. The ECHO and DOT were out and ok, some people might have been talking about it and maybe some people on here were saying "hey, Sonos, Alexa, hmm?, hmmmm?" but that would have been it.
It's dangerous from a companycustomer relationship standpoint to open the door to questions like "did you only announce this so people would go and buy ECHO's and DOT's thus helping Amazon sell their product when Google was hot on their heels".
Because, it wouldn't be hard to make an argument for that when you consider it was Sonos who decided to announce Alexa functionality and they did it in a way which is totally opposed to the very thing the majority of their consumers use. Why do that?, why not just say nothing if it's so difficult to add local library functionality, until you figure out a way to do it?, and then announce :?
To me, this from the press release that still sits on the Sonos website is misleading:
"Sonos owners with an Alexa-enabled device such as an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot will soon be able to use Amazon’s popular Alexa service to control their Sonos sound system"
That part of the sentence is not true today.
Now sure, the press release goes on to say:
"Simply ask Alexa to play your music from Amazon Music, Spotify and more and it will flow to any group of Sonos speakers in the home. By integrating Alexa into their Sonos sound systems, owners can use their voice to play, pause, skip, control volume and more."
But aside the fact that Spotify isn't available, so that part of the sentence is partially baloney too - the former paragraph infers a myth that the rest of the press release does nothing to dispel.
Read it for yourself > http://press-us.sonos.com/134980-sonos-with-partners-and-industry-leaders-ushers-in-new-era-of-connected-home-listening <
I have always said, as a tech geek and someone that works in the tech industry that my Sonos was the best item of tech I have ever bought, but when a company does stuff like this, they are well on their way to losing people who advocate the brand.
IMHO. A Sonos products key market is not streaming. Very few people are buying Sonos kit costing in the hundreds (and in many cases thousands) of $ to play streamable content when they probably have a TV or a iPhone doc that can do that already. I'd actually be very interested to hear someone from Sonos look at the data of new hardware purchases and tell us what those people are using the product for, because I find it hard to believe that the main and best product feature of Sonos does not remain the local library functionality... and the company would do well to remember that when they decide to release like this.
And just to comment on people saying it's a much harder task than it appears.
I as a local library users of probably 3-4Tb of music, understand that voice recognition of all my ambiguous songs and artists is tough. I get that.
However what I don't get is why the first release doesn't have the ability to play (at the very least) playlists, this would be easy enough to push/send my playlist to my 'room' and then send the eplay] command to, and a simple advisory to make the playlist names 'simple' would be all that's required.
So, I'm sorry, the idea that local library functionality couldn't in any way be made available is hooey to me. Especially when I can ask Alexa to play a song and there's no problem finding a sample version of it in the Amazon library, but I can't play the full high quality file sitting in my local library. That's pretty 😞 😠 to say the least.
Just my 2p.
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