Best answer by Ryan S
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Playing Local Music Library on Sonos through Alexa
Userlevel 2
Will alexa skill be able to play from my music library?
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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.
Userlevel 2
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.
Userlevel 7
+26
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.
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.
Userlevel 1
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 [play] 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 [play] 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.
I have all my music locally, and also have spotify so would love further integration but I fully expect that to come. If only the simplest of technical projects I work on for a major company could deliver in a year! And actually work!
Don't be so damned patronising.
I'm in a similar position to you, all music locally + Spotify, but I've also just had to shell out £120 for a 'repair' of a Play:3 that had hardly been used. It was a big decision to make when I could've got a brand new Echo for a similar price. It was an email from Sonos about Alexa support being imminent that made me decide to go ahead with this 'repair' but it seems the Alexa support is of little use to me at this time without local library access and/or Spotify.
I obviously think we're perfectly justified in finding this situation very disappointing, especially with the lack of evidence from Sonos that they are working hard to support those of us who invested in their system when external streaming options were not even worth thinking about due to network bandwidth and download restrictions.
I, for one, will certainly not be buying any more Sonos equipment, nor paying for 'repairs' of any of the ones I've got. I feel pretty aggrieved about the fact that this power supply failure (which seems to be quite common from what I've read in this forum) has cost me £120 to sort out when, had the power supply been external, it could probably have been replaced for less than £20.
I have OpenHAB home automation. That integrates with Sonos and can play anything from my Favourites or Playlists. Well, it could. That's just broken with the new app.
You win some, you lose some.
It's probably not beyond the wit of Sonos and Amazon to fix access to a local NAS library. If some unpaid programmer can create an integration for OpenHAB just because it would be cool, I'm sure the guys that get paid as a day job can do it. We just need to give them an incentive, like "WE WANT IT!!!"
You win some, you lose some.
It's probably not beyond the wit of Sonos and Amazon to fix access to a local NAS library. If some unpaid programmer can create an integration for OpenHAB just because it would be cool, I'm sure the guys that get paid as a day job can do it. We just need to give them an incentive, like "WE WANT IT!!!"
What a waste of time. If Alexa and Sonos can not play my library. It is all about money and control and not about music. 😞
Sonos needs to add Library control or Amazon will eat their lunch. Bottom line: No support to use Alexa to play Sonos Library. Scenario 1: Use Bluetooth to connect Echo Dot to Sonos:Connect. Alexa speaks through your Sonos system. Does not require link of Sonos service to Echo Dot Scenario 2: Use wifi to have Echo Dot and Sonos:Connect communicate. Alexa speaks through the echo dot speaker. In this case needed Sonos 8.1 on Sonos:Connect and Sonos service in Alexa to use wifi.
What?! That's crazy... I've spent years building a library of my own music... and was so looking forward to having the alexa integration. But it won't play anything from my local library? That's just NOT ok! Once Alexa figures out teh commend is for Sonos, it gets transferred to the Sonos cloud for processing... and the Sonos cloud has access to my library. So it should work.
I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't like to pay the monthly fees to listen to the music I like... I just buy the music I like. Having the Alexa-Sonos integration only work with [a handful] of streaming services really cripples the integration.
Are there plans to allow Alexa commands that play from my music library?
Totally agree
This makes the Sonos One very limiting!
This makes the Sonos One very limiting!
As soon as i can use voice control for my local library im cancelling my Amazon Music supscription, bring it on Sonos!
Uhhh, not the best way to encourage Amazon to work with Sonos to bring this feature to Alexa. 😉
Userlevel 1
Look, I bought Sonos years ago to handle my local library. I spent weeks ripping and tagging my CD collection and housing it on redundant systems so Sonos could play it. Then I find out that Sonos can't handle tags with multiple genres ("Rock; Pop" does not go into the Rock genre and the Pop genre; instead it's in its own "Rock; Pop" genre, which is useless. I prove to tech support that this is not working, and then I wait, and wait, and wait for years, for them to fix the software so that local music is tagged correctly, like every other music player works. It still hasn't happened.
So, not only has the local music library been totally de-prioritized; but the defect would carry through to Alexa if Sonos ever moved the index into the cloud. The advertised "Alexa, play some chill music" would have to be done as "Alexa, play some chill semi-colon jazz music".
I had decided I wasn't buying another Sonos product until they fixed the music genre indexing. Then, they announced the Alexa integration, and how I could just tell it to play my music. I guess I missed the fine print that the local library was ignored again. Consider me fooled twice.
So, not only has the local music library been totally de-prioritized; but the defect would carry through to Alexa if Sonos ever moved the index into the cloud. The advertised "Alexa, play some chill music" would have to be done as "Alexa, play some chill semi-colon jazz music".
I had decided I wasn't buying another Sonos product until they fixed the music genre indexing. Then, they announced the Alexa integration, and how I could just tell it to play my music. I guess I missed the fine print that the local library was ignored again. Consider me fooled twice.
This is a quote from the last latest Sonos instructions on how to use Alexa with Sonos: "You can initiate playback from any music source, such as local music library...". That's from Sonos! Is it possible or not?
Finish the quote. Context is very important:
"You can initiate playback from any music source, such as local music library, using the Sonos app, and basic playback commands, such as play/pause, volume and skip, will continue to work."
I am commenting merely to place my vote that Sonos work on developing the functionality to be able to control my music library via Alexa. At the very least, to be able to start playlists, although full control is ideal. If there is somewhere to vote on new features, I would do that, but I am unaware of that place so I am just adding this comment to the thread.
Userlevel 2
So... an interesting - but as yet unfulfilling - development for members of this thread. I found an Amazon skill called My Media that supports the indexing and playing of a local music library. The voice pattern of the skill is "Alexa, tell My Media to play My Top Rated."
So far it works really well - supports playlists, etc. all tested in a Mac - iTunes environment. So those of you wringing your hands about technical difficulties, rest assured, it can and has been done. However... here's the rub: It cannot play through to a Sonos device.
So here's the plan. Sonos should buy the company (wish I owned it) and integrate the server-side code into Sonos Controller (with an option to launch at startup and run in the background as a service), then merge the My Media skill into the Sonos skill for a "Alexa, tell Sonos to play My Top Rated in the Living Room." Another option might be just to support the My Media service in the Sonos skill just like any other streaming service.
Easy for me to say, huh? Oh, and do it before Christmas so all of those little kiddies who get Sonos One from Santa aren't disappointed...
So far it works really well - supports playlists, etc. all tested in a Mac - iTunes environment. So those of you wringing your hands about technical difficulties, rest assured, it can and has been done. However... here's the rub: It cannot play through to a Sonos device.
So here's the plan. Sonos should buy the company (wish I owned it) and integrate the server-side code into Sonos Controller (with an option to launch at startup and run in the background as a service), then merge the My Media skill into the Sonos skill for a "Alexa, tell Sonos to play My Top Rated in the Living Room." Another option might be just to support the My Media service in the Sonos skill just like any other streaming service.
Easy for me to say, huh? Oh, and do it before Christmas so all of those little kiddies who get Sonos One from Santa aren't disappointed...
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