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Contributor I
October 4, 2017
Answered

2 Issues with Alexa and Sonos, Can you help?

  • October 4, 2017
  • 32 replies
  • 16537 views
Hi,
I was able to set up my connection with Alexa and Sonos, and I can use Alexa to start playing music without any issues.
However, once the music starts, I have two issues: 1. I cannot stop the music. 2. the music stops playing after a single song.

For example, if I say "Alexa, play the Beatles in the living room", music will start up on the Sonos system. However, if I ask her to stop the music ("Alexa, stop the music in the living room," "Alexa, pause the music in the living room"), she dims the sound of the Sonos speakers, responds with "I can change the playback mode only when music is playing" and then raises the volume of the living room again.

When first requested to play music, Alexa responds with something like, "Shuffling popular songs by the Beatles in the Living Room." However, she stops playing after a single song, every time, no matter what the playlist. If I play the same playlist through the sonos app, it keeps playing.

I'm not sure what the issue is, since clearly she is connected (she can start playing music) but then she seems to forget that she is playing music, thus disabling the ability to stop music playback or continue listening past a single song.

In case it is helpful, here is a bit about the setup:
Alexa device is an Echo Dot, connected to Wifi
Sonos Living Room speakers include: Playbar, Sub, and 2 Play 1 speakers, connected to the Sonos Bridge wireless network.
No Echo devices are linked via line in to any Sonos devices.

I would appreciate some help in getting these two issues resolved. After waiting so long for Alexa integration, it's sad to see it launched but not really working. Thanks in advance for any constructive help you may have to offer.
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Best answer by MusicListenerSonos
Here is an update on how I was able to find a work-around:
1. forget all Sonos devices in the Alexa App.
2. Disable the Sonos Skill in the Alexa App.
3. Re-enable the Sonos Skill in the Alexa App.
4. Power Off then on Echo Dot
5. Power Off then on the Sonos speakers

Now I can both start and stop music in the living room, as well as advance tracks. The music does not stop after a single song.

Hopefully these steps will help someone else. The key here is that simply disabling and re-enabling the skill is not sufficient. Devices must actually be powered off to solve the issue.

32 replies

Contributor I
October 15, 2017
I finally figured out my issue yesterday. The issue was that I have multiple echos in my house and they were on 2 separate Amazon accounts. Even though I only set up the Sonos skill on the echo dot that is linked to one of my Amazon accounts, apparently there is still a conflict within the Echo/Sonos software environment that causes the music to stop at one song. Once I reset my Echo Dot and removed the 2nd account and put the Echo on the other Amazon account (where both Echos were now on the same account that I added the Sonos skill), the voice service is working exactly the way it was intended to. Hopefully, this helps somebody else out there.
Lyricist I
November 9, 2017
I was successful disabling the Sonos Skill in the Alexa software, and then ehabling it again. These are two of the weakest clunkiest pieces of software I have ever used.