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Playing Local Music Library on Sonos through Alexa

  • 4 October 2017
  • 87 replies
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Will alexa skill be able to play from my music library?
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Best answer by Ryan S 4 October 2017, 21:50

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I have spent £10,000 on Sonos & I wish I didn’t I have thousands of music files & Sonos only lets me play some or I have to pay for a streaming service this is when Sonos decides to work so many times all I get is unable to find Sonos which I never bought it
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So a year later and no change.
I’d just like to add my voice to the many ofhers here with a polite request for Sonos to implement this feature as soon as possible.
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Brutal. Man, I did a ton of reading and just bought Alexa and never thought to ask this because I thought it was a given. I feel pretty ripped off. My music library has some pretty rare tracks that you'll never find on any music service.
Thinking about taking it back.


You can still initiate the tracks on your music library from the app and then voice control afterwards - it's just the initiation part that doesn't work via voice. Not ideal but hopefully this will be sorted soon.


Let's be clear - this is a HUGE fail.

And, to be clear - look at Alexa on Amazon. Alexa has full knowledge of my Library, just unable to play it. WTF?
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I have just activated a Sonos One in my system for voice. As Sparkydark says, lots of reading done prior to getting the One add on - to date I have been enjoying the Sonos systems I have, but wrongly assumed that my music library would be controlled by Alexa (which would appear to be a *fundamental*).

Here's hoping that UKMedia's report of the Sonos CEO committing to have this done results in it getting done!
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Brutal. Man, I did a ton of reading and just bought Alexa and never thought to ask this because I thought it was a given. I feel pretty ripped off. My music library has some pretty rare tracks that you'll never find on any music service.
Thinking about taking it back.


You can still initiate the tracks on your music library from the app and then voice control afterwards - it's just the initiation part that doesn't work via voice. Not ideal but hopefully this will be sorted soon.
Brutal. Man, I did a ton of reading and just bought Alexa and never thought to ask this because I thought it was a given. I feel pretty ripped off. My music library has some pretty rare tracks that you'll never find on any music service.
Thinking about taking it back.
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Well here I am patiently waiting in Australia for Alexa to 'çontrol' my Sonos - and it finally arrived in Jan 2018. Already have 1's set up in stereo so no use getting a P1 with Alexa so went with an Echo Dot. As noted by my irate colleagues - can it play from my Sonos library ?? (the only reason I bought one) unbelievably no. Love my Sonos, very stable, great sound, handles my big library easily. However they perhaps should have given voice control a miss until one of the fundamentals was worked out. Anyone in the market for a brand new Dot - it tells jokes and knows the weather !

The Sonos CEO has committed to getting this to work but no Alexa or Google device plays locally stored music smoothly at present.
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Well here I am patiently waiting in Australia for Alexa to 'çontrol' my Sonos - and it finally arrived in Jan 2018. Already have 1's set up in stereo so no use getting a P1 with Alexa so went with an Echo Dot. As noted by my irate colleagues - can it play from my Sonos library ?? (the only reason I bought one) unbelievably no. Love my Sonos, very stable, great sound, handles my big library easily. However they perhaps should have given voice control a miss until one of the fundamentals was worked out. Anyone in the market for a brand new Dot - it tells jokes and knows the weather !
I came to this thread looking for how to use the Alexa voice command to play my local library on my Sonos system. I thought it was just my lack of know-how, but apparently it can't be done. So I am overjoyed to learn that I'm not just a technical simpleton, but someone who was also duped by the marketing. Seriously, I'm very disappointed because I did think that Alexa in the Sonos One would be able to play ALL my music sources, not just the streaming services. I hope that Sonos works out a solution to this.
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I am very disappointed the Sonos Alexa skill cannot play music from my local music library. I an frustrated that it can do track-level operations on albums I have played through direct Sonos control of my music library. I want it to do more and don't use streaming music sources, and never have.

Come on Sonos; get your lovely speaker SW ass in gear and (a) commit to providing Sonos Alex control of music library playing, and (b) deliver it promptly. We'll all love you for it.
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FYI - Please see my last post in this thread for another possible solution:

https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/playing-from-local-music-library-not-possible-using-alexa-voice-control-6797647/index1.html#post16192554
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From link here

https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Multimedia/How_to_enable_Audio_Station_skill_on_Amazon_Alexa


Synology are able to use alexa to navigate and play music from a local audio station client installed on the
Nas. I have been using synology for over five years and run all my local media off it so know it well. Using Plex and audio station.

So this is defiantly not an amazon or alexa limitation on streaming music locally. There should be zero reason sonos cannot implement this feature.

I guess sonos wants to go the way of blackberry.


Siri and Apple can also play music locally stored on iOS devices - and I am not taking about Apple Music as I refuse to Trent music or pay for streaming services.




commands available to stream local music library using Synology audio station that Sonos should be able to reproduce

3. List of supported voice commands
With Audio Station skill, you use the voice commands below to play your songs, songs by a specific artist, an album, or playlists, as well as check the currently playing music.
Alexa, ask Audio Station to + play
start
search + [song name]1
the music
track
songs
audio by [artist]
the album [album name]
the playlist [playlist name]
Ask what's playing
Ask what song is the song
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From link here

https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Multimedia/How_to_enable_Audio_Station_skill_on_Amazon_Alexa


Synology are able to use alexa to navigate and play music from a local audio station client installed on the
Nas. I have been using synology for over five years and run all my local media off it so know it well. Using Plex and audio station.

So this is defiantly not an amazon or alexa limitation on streaming music locally. There should be zero reason sonos cannot implement this feature.

I guess sonos wants to go the way of blackberry.


Siri and Apple can also play music locally stored on iOS devices - and I am not taking about Apple Music as I refuse to Trent music or pay for streaming services.
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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?


Siri can play local music from my iPhone and not using Apple Music or streaming services
I love sonos I have the full range from a one player right up to the sub and play bar all of which are great, but not being able to voice command music from my library with Alexa via my new sonos player is a BIG mistake and something Sonos must address pretty soon as it makes mine use less as all my music is brought, owned and not streamed.
Please advise on an update to this issue
I would never want to have to run a local server, and I despise the "Tell XXXX to do YYYY" phrasing. No thank you. Sonos should do it right or not do it at all.

Leaving merely 6766 other viewers of this forum who might....


As of now, there is only one vote for and one vote against. You speculate all you wish, but I think I can say that after 9+ years of helping out on this forum, the requirement to both run a local server and regress to "Alexa tell Sonos to XXXX" instead of the current phrasing would cause an uproar of epic proportions. I'll take that experience over your "I think this way and 6766 other viewers might also" speculation.

Besides, there is a user (controlav) here who has developed just this kind of implementation via his own homegrown skill. If your speculation was correct, there would be no need for this thread, you could simply load his stuff and be a happy camper. Lord knows he is not shy in promoting it.
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I would never want to have to run a local server, and I despise the "Tell XXXX to do YYYY" phrasing. No thank you. Sonos should do it right or not do it at all.

Leaving merely 6766 other viewers of this forum who might....
I would never want to have to run a local server, and I despise the "Tell XXXX to do YYYY" phrasing. No thank you. Sonos should do it right or not do it at all.
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P.S. Someone should merge all of these "Alexa local music library" threads into one to rule them all... Seems like a popular topic.
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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...
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.
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."
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?
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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.