Contributor I

Answered

Alexa now using BBC skill rather than TuneIn

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
June 14, 2018
38 replies
12993 views

My two Sonos Ones have previously been playing BBC radio stations via TuneIn without any problems: 'Alexa, play BBC Radio 4' would return 'Playing BBC Radio 4 from TuneIn' and the appropriate audio stream.

Something strange has started happening today. Alexa is now trying to use a BBC skill and, depending on exactly how I ask, may or may not play audio. If I say 'Alexa, play BBC Radio 4', it returns 'Here's Radio 4 FM (tone) the BBC' and no audio stream. If I say 'Alexa, play BBC Radio 4 from the BBC', it again returns 'Here's Radio 4 FM (tone) the BBC' but now with the correct audio stream. Weird, I know: I have tested it again and again.

When I look at my Alexa settings, it has added a new BBC skill. If I remove the skill, it just adds it back whenever I request a BBC radio channel. I don't mind using TuneIn or the BBC, but I don't want to have to specify the source every time.

I don't know whether this relates to yesterday's 8.6 upgrade or perhaps Amazon have made a change to Alexa.

Anybody experiencing similar issues?

Alexa Skills

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Best answer by mikey2bags

Good news! My BBC radio stations are working again. Even though I still have the BBC skill enabled, requests such as 'Alexa, play Radio 4', 'Alexa, play BBC Radio 4' , 'Alexa, play 6 Music', etc. all play via TuneIn.

I see that neither BBC nor Sonos skills have been updated, so I think that this was caused by skills prioritisation and auto-enablement in the core Alexa code. They have perhaps altered their logic in response to a request from Sonos.

I would like to thank all those that have been involved in identifying and escalating this issue.

A

APSymB

Lyricist III

Yes, just noticed today after 8.6 update. Previously, alexa on sonos one used TuneIn which worked fine. Now, if I say “Alexa, play BBC radio five live”, I get “Here’s Radio 5 live” and then “(tone) the BBC” and no audio stream. I have found that saying the name of the sonos one speaker works and uses the TuneIn feed and not the BBC skill (“Alexa play BBC radio five live on sonos”). I have also confirmed that saying “Alexa, play BBC radio five live from the BBC” also works but this time using the BBC skill.

I can’t permanently disable the BBC skill.

Hopefully, sonos will look into this bug.

P

ppiixx

Lyricist III

Same problem here. Saying the device name or 'from TuneIn' work as a workaround.

J

justaguy

Lyricist III

Same issue, having just updated Sonos to 8.6

Saying "Play Radio 6" gets a response "Here's Radio 6... from the BBC". But it then doesn't even play!

I have deactivated the BBC skill and yet it seems to persist?

Really frustrating...

Ken_Griffiths

Same issue, having just updated Sonos to 8.6

Saying "Play Radio 6" gets a response "Here's Radio 6... from the BBC". But it then doesn't even play!

I have deactivated the BBC skill and yet it seems to persist?

Really frustrating...

What happens if you say ...

'Alexa, Play BBC Radio 1 in (Sonos Room Name)' ...doesn’t that work for you ?

A

AS50

Lyricist I

I have the same error, the only way that it currently works is as Ken says to specify the room, don't mention Tunein. That is definitely a change, but doesn't seem to make sense!

J

justaguy

Lyricist III

Hi Ken - thanks, I'll try that when I get home later. I only have one Sonos/Alexa device though.

I should have said, it worked perfectly well before the Sonos update. Specifically, saying "Play BBC Radio 6" played it via Tunein.

Any ideas on how to properly remove the BBC skill welcome also,

Ken_Griffiths

justaguy,

I would have thought deleting the Skill would have been sufficient, but when I set my BBC skill up there was an account linking/sharing process that I went through to link my BBC Account to my Amazon Account (sharing agreement), so perhaps a user needs to break that sharing agreement online. I will dig around some more to perhaps see if I can glean any further information.

Meanwhile ...
If I say 'Alexa, Play BBC Radio 6 in the Kitchen' ... where Kitchen is my Sonos One Room name ... it plays Radio 6 from Tune-in rather than the BBC Skill.

K

kbbc

I have the same issue as mikey2bags. 'Alexa, play BBC Radio 4' worked fine yesterday morning (playing via TuneIn), but when the same command was used in the evening, it just came back with 'Here's Radio 4 FM (tone) the BBC' and no audio stream. I hadn't updated my Sonos system at that point, therefore the problem was evident prior to the 8.6 update. I then tried the 8.6 update hoping that it would resolve the problem but with no luck. I suspect that the cause of the problem is therefore unlikely to directly be the 8.6 update.

Ken_Griffiths

If a user decides to leave the BBC Skill installed on their Amazon Alexa account, the example voice-command in my previous post will work to play a radio station from Tune-In, by including the Sonos Room Name.

However, if a user decides they would prefer to use the BBC Skill instead, then this is their recommended (example) command to play a radio station...

'Alexa, ask the BBC to play Radio One'

Just for info..!

M

mikey2bagsAuthor

Contributor I

Thanks for all the replies - it isn't just me then.

Specifying either the room (invokes TuneIn) or the source (either TuneIn or the BBC) appears to work. It is just unqualified requests that invoke the BBC skill and no audio stream.

I note your comment about the 8.6 update kbbc. If I had to guess, I would say the problem was introduced when the Sonos skill was updated a day ago. I imagine you were using that even before you updated your system to 8.6.

Over to you Sonos?

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