Question

Sonos one, rather a disappointment. Sound great though (as I would expect)

  • 17 December 2017
  • 8 replies
  • 650 views

Userlevel 1
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Bought a Sonos One today, for a second home. Have many Sonos products at home, but this is on its own in a holiday home.
Disappointed to find out that the Alexa will not play my music collection on my iPad or iPhone unless I copy files up into amazon, or play manually.

Appears to really be designed for services rather than local music.

Not that I have it here but if my Sonos system had access to my iTunes library would Alexa also not be able to find these?
😞

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8 replies

There are signifant technological barriers to Alexa support for initializing play of local libraries. The first of which is having a cloud index of your library. Note you can initialize play via the Sonos app, then have Alexa control of play, pause, skip, previous, volume, and even ask what's playing.
If voice works well for you, consider a subscription to a supported service. Probably only Amazon at this time. The full value of the feature is obtained only when you can initiate music play via voice, is what I have found.
Userlevel 1
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Sonos is a great product, so much so we have playbar, 2xplay3, play5 and a couple of 1s, it is the reason why I just adopted this for the barn.
Guess that they are not going to mention this when you buy, hey ho such is life.
One thing that was not mentioned but came as a nice surprise was no need for the bridge that we have at home as integrated.
So there was a positive, Sonos/Alexa/Amazon would be nice to get local support sorted though, as I expect, as I did most people assume Alexa will support everything. Alexa turn on Christmas lights ?

Noted that on iPhone sonos found all my local playlists ect, but not on my iPad?
Userlevel 7
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Noted that on iPhone sonos found all my local playlists ect, but not on my iPad?
You probably need to check: Settings | Sonos | Allow Sonos to Access | Media & Apple Music
Badge +1
Spotify Premium is currently 99p for 3 months for new customers.

I only found out the day before buying my Dot & Sonos Play 1 that I would need a subscription music service, but I decided to go ahead anyway.
Userlevel 1
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Sadly I cannot fully cut and paste this email from Sonos this morning

This ad for Sonos one is incorrect and miss representative, as it will not access my version of The kinks songs in my library by voice !!

It does not say that to do this you require a streaming service, which you must have for this feature.

Poor and misrepresentative marketing to cash in pre Christmas.

On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 at 10:17, Sonos wrote:

SONOS
From Wishlist to Playlist
Save £50 on Play:1 or Play:3
New lower price
Order your gifts by 19th December 2017 to get them under the tree in time with free delivery.
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Still seeking the perfect present for that family member who’s particularly hard to buy for? Behold the all-new Sonos One with Amazon Alexa.
Shop now

Graphic showing “Alexa play songs by the Kinks in the kitchen”
Userlevel 7
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In their defence this is an Alexa limitation rather than a Sonos one and you can play The Kinks from a streaming service.
Userlevel 7
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I'm sorry but having a product NOT perform in the way that you erroneously assumed is not in any way mis-leading.

It's simply evidence of a complete lack of due diligence by the purchaser.

That's not to say, of course, that it isn't a feature we hope will be available at some point in time