Alexa welcomes Apple Music to Amazon Echo

Airplay 2 does not always stream directly from your phone to the device.
For example HomePod siri voice commands will stream music from the music service via internet to the HomePod.
yeah only if you have a home pod, If you have sonos the chance of you having a home pod is about nil.

Having a HomePod or not has nothing to do with how Airplay 2 works which is what I was responding to. There are also other scenarios where Airplay 2 pulls directly from the music service.
You are incorrect that people who own Sonos or Homepods might not have both. I myself know many people who have both. I have four Homepods in two stereo pairs and a Beam, Sub, and rear Sonos Ones and two Sonos Ones for outdoors.
The Homepods sound better for music than anything Sonos makes including the Play 5 which is much more expensive. In fact I sold two Play 5's on Craigslist after stereo pairing came put for the Homepods.
I use Sonos for home theater and cheap outdoor speakers and Homepods for music. I also like the 360 coverage since SQ doesn't change as you move around a room.

Alexa Cast streams from the cloud, controlled from your phone running the Amazon Music app. The phone doesn’t need to be connected to your WiFi.
Well that's cool. wish airplay was like that.
Apple is always at least three years behind the competition, lol. AirPlay is a dinosaur.

Which tells me you know nothing about Apple, Airplay, and especially Airplay 2.
Meanwhile Sonos and many other audio companies are getting Airplay2 into as many of their products as fast as they can because their customers want it.

Alexa Cast streams from the cloud, controlled from your phone running the Amazon Music app. The phone doesn’t need to be connected to your WiFi.
Well that's cool. wish airplay was like that.

As I mentioned above Airplay 2 does in some circumstances pull directly from the music service.

Alexa Cast streams from the cloud, controlled from your phone running the Amazon Music app. The phone doesn’t need to be connected to your WiFi.
Well that's cool. wish airplay was like that.
Apple is always at least three years behind the competition, lol. AirPlay is a dinosaur.

Which tells me you know nothing about Apple, Airplay, and especially Airplay 2.

Enough to know that AirPlay is my last choice, just above BlueTooth, for my iPhone and iPads. It requires much more bandwidth than casting, requires your phone to be on while playing, like BlueTooth, simply isn’t on the same playing field as the competition. Maybe on the HomePod, but having listened, and read the reviews (outside the Apple fanboy rags), the HomePod loses to the Beam, to stereo-paired Ones, and certainly to the Play:5. Virtually every review.

Alexa Cast streams from the cloud, controlled from your phone running the Amazon Music app. The phone doesn’t need to be connected to your WiFi.
Well that's cool. wish airplay was like that.
Apple is always at least three years behind the competition, lol. AirPlay is a dinosaur.

Which tells me you know nothing about Apple, Airplay, and especially Airplay 2.

Enough to know that AirPlay is my last choice, just above BlueTooth, for my iPhone and iPads. It requires much more bandwidth than casting, requires your phone to be on while playing, like BlueTooth, simply isn’t on the same playing field as the competition. Maybe on the HomePod, but having listened, and read the reviews (outside the Apple fanboy rags), the HomePod loses to the Beam, to stereo-paired Ones, and certainly to the Play:5. Virtually every review.

Everything you said is incorrect and that is easily proven but I'm not going to further pollute this thread with responding further. There are plenty of places you can rag on Apple without knowing what you are talking about.

Lol.

I use Tidal on Sonos 1 and set Alexa to use Tidal as default music service. Works great. I have Apple music too and am excited to see it as an upcoming option. Tidal + Apple music is a great combo.

I use Tidal on Sonos 1 and set Alexa to use Tidal as default music service. Works great.

Thanks for confirming! Good indication that Apple Music just might work via Alexa on Sonos, without Sonos needing to do anything. That wasn’t the case with Spotify, or with a host of other Alexa skills, though, so time will tell.

Nice, hoping this means I can set default music to Apple Music in Alexa and use Alexa to play from Apple Music on my Sonos Ones. I have switched entirely to Apple Music for the watch and HomePod, but kept a individual Spotify subscription just for the Sonos Ones. If this works out it'll be bye bye Spotify for me.

Enough to know that AirPlay is my last choice, just above BlueTooth, for my iPhone and iPads. It requires much more bandwidth than casting, requires your phone to be on while playing, like BlueTooth, simply isn’t on the same playing field as the competition. Maybe on the HomePod, but having listened, and read the reviews (outside the Apple fanboy rags), the HomePod loses to the Beam, to stereo-paired Ones, and certainly to the Play:5. Virtually every review.

Everything you said is incorrect and that is easily proven but I'm not going to further pollute this thread with responding further. There are plenty of places you can rag on Apple without knowing what you are talking about.

I think chicks was speaking in terms of airplay 2 with Sonos speakers in his first 2 statements, and i have to agree with him. You might not need to stream through your phone/ipad when your speaker is homepod or AppleTV, but you certainly do with Sonos speakers.

I wouldn't necessarily say that casting from a specific app is necessarily better than airplay 2 though. Casting is almost always going to give you a better stream, but airplay, like bluetooth, is not limited to a specific streaming app.

Regarding which speakers sound better, 'better' is always subjective. I've seen reviews pointing both ways, but yes, mostly favoring Sonos. What matters is what you personally prefer.