Alexa + Sonos: How it Works

Having trouble getting my iPhone app to update. It goes to the app store and does nothing. Any ideas?

I’m finding that I’ve updated the iOS app however the Alexa app won’t continue with the skill as it says that the iOS app hasn’t been updated.

Anybody else experiencing this ?

Are you kddding me!!! So you are saying Alexa only works if you are signed up with an online streaming service! I waited 18 months to be told that! What is the point? Unbelievable.
With all due respect, I think the point is that streaming is future for most music consumption. Globally, digital already accounts for more than half of music revenue, and streaming is the majority of that. It grew over 60% in one year. Obviously in places like the United States streaming is even more dominant.

There's nothing wrong with the way you choose to consume your music, but you have to be aware of the reality of the market. Sonos has prioritized these streaming features for the initial release. You can't think it'd be smarter to hold off until they've covered every aspect if this portion is ready.

Will this be available in the future? For me that's the beauty of Sonos, the way it handles the local music library.

I hope so too, but they've clearly said this is only the beginning.

The major value of Sonos to me is that it is service-agnostic, so this sucks.

You seem to be taking the view that this is the final release. Sonos approach is agnostic, but this first iteration only has one service. Other things are coming, but it doesn't make sense to hold off until it's all ready.

Having trouble getting my iPhone app to update. It goes to the app store and does nothing. Any ideas?
You might want to uninstall the app and re-install it.

Will the voice control on the Sonos One have more access?

There's nothing wrong with the way you choose to consume your music, but you have to be aware of the reality of the market. Sonos has prioritized these streaming features for the initial release. You can't think it'd be smarter to hold off until they've covered every aspect if this portion is ready

With all due respect not all of us "choose" the way we listen to music - we're lumped with it, but at least Sonos has done a relatively fair overall job of always supporting local music vs gradual adding of many streaming services - but this seems to fly in the face of that choice.

I do appreciate the lack of planned obsolescence from Sonos overall - I just thought local music would be their first priority.

With all due respect not all of us "choose" the way we listen to music...

I do appreciate the lack of planned obsolescence from Sonos overall - I just thought local music would be their first priority.
Semantics. My points all remain.

It isn't logical to me to expect that Sonos would target a smaller, shrinking market first. I will be happy when they do though!

If I ask Alexa to start playing music in the bedroom all the Sonos speakers will play. Should it be possible to just start playing on one speaker or do I need to group/ungroup in the app before giving the play command?
It'll start playing in all the rooms that are grouped with that player. If you just want to play in that room, you'll need to separate the group out. We'd love to add some grouping features one day, so stay tuned. The skill will get better and have more features over time.


I get that grouping/ungrouping is not yet available through voice, but I have to say that this seems like the wrong default behavior. I'd much rather have it be that if I specifically tell Alexa to play music in a given room that it would play in that room and that room alone (breaking any existing groups if necessary) and then I could use the app or the new long-press feature on the speakers to add additional rooms to create a new group if I want.

I know that, at least in my household, if someone says "Alexa, play rock music in the kitchen" and music starts playing in the bedrooms upstairs, they are going to think that something is broken.

More importantly, we've got a lot of people in our house using Sonos throughout the day, so I'm not usually in a position to know or remember how the speakers are grouped at any given time. Even if I understand how the functionality works, I'm not going to feel comfortable saying "Alexa, play rock music in the kitchen" if there is a risk that it might start blaring music upstairs where a kid might be napping or my spouse might be working, etc. So it seems like with this default behavior, I'm going to need to launch the Sonos app to check the grouping before issuing any voice commands, which kind of defeats the purpose of voice control...

While I understand your perspective, mine is the exact polar opposite. If I group a set of rooms, I don't want voice control to arbitrarily break that grouping, especially since there's no current support for grouping in the voice command architecture.

Are you kddding me!!! So you are saying Alexa only works if you are signed up with an online streaming service! I waited 18 months to be told that! What is the point? Unbelievable. I have my own local collection of music precisely because I don't want an online steaming service


Why can't you just upload your local music to say Amazon or Google Play? You can do that for free. Then just stream that way? Like, you can upload all of your content and control it once it's in their cloud.

Because I have invested in an external nas.

Not everyone wants to upload their stuff into the cloud and be forced to rent music via paying for a streaming service. I like to own my music and have ability to play it when and where I want