New to Sonos or Alexa? How to set up

ah well all good things take time and Im sure once it is refined and bugs squashed, it'll be up to Sonos's usual level of awesomeness..... I really hope it'll support playback from my own music library though ... fingers crossed

You are taking cheap shots behind the anonymity of the internet,

This statement in conjunction with the rest of your post making assumptions on my level of experience in bringing applications to market and your opinion that i am "talking out of my nether regions" is somewhat hypocritical dont you think? The anonymity you are being afforded by the internet certainly appears to be facilitating a tone i doubt you would take away from the keyboard.

Fyi I have commissioned apps to be delivered on both android and apple handsets, as well as having had developed bespoke reporting tools used within the uk energy industry.

Whilst not having direct access to amazons own in house developers, i can draw my own conclusions based on my experience in development. I know how much our developers cost, what they are capable of and how much they cost. When i compare our budget to the resources amazon have available, all other things being equal (developer costs and skillset), then the only logical conclusion i can draw is that the functionality omissions are by design.

Maybe im wrong and these functions will arrive. Though whether you choose to accept it or not, there is also the possibility that i am right, and these omissions are down to either commercial design or the fact they just didnt want to bother going to that expense on developers delivering functionality that doesnt provide them (amazon/sonos) with any extra value.

Whether you are right or wrong, your cheap shots at the Sonos developers were cowardly and pure vitriol. Dial it back a bit and maybe people will take you seriously. This is a middle to high priced music system, a leisure activity toy of the upper classes. To be insulting the talent level of people you dont know over not getting your pet features is juvenile nonsense, the stuff of game console and comic book forums. Sorry to be so blunt, but if you actually do have the experience you claim (not that it is even close to qualifying one to comment on this implementation), you would do well to act your frigging age.

And the difference between you attacking them and me attacking you is enormous. You can fight back, Sonos employees have to eat your crap and smile.

I then proceeded to offer a logical theory from the available evidence.

As am I.

evidence available to myself being:

that the functionality is already available in home brew format.

Experience in deploying that home brew to one stage from public submission/publication via amazon marketplace

Experience of bringing apps to market on multiple platforms and the costs/skillset of developers required.


My logical conclusion is that Amazon and Sonos have access to development teams at least as skillful as those ive employed before, and have access to infinitely higher budgets. It would therefore, in my opinion, be well within their capability of delivering the homwbrew functionalities in a native format of they wanted to within the 9 months or so they have been working on it. I can also logically conclude that they chose not to for commercial reasons, be those a will to drive consumers to amazon services, or a cost vs benefit of delivering the extra functionalities.

You are taking cheap shots behind the anonymity of the internet,

This statement in conjunction with the rest of your post making assumptions on my level of experience in bringing applications to market and your opinion that i am "talking out of my nether regions" is somewhat hypocritical dont you think? The anonymity you are being afforded by the internet certainly appears to be facilitating a tone i doubt you would take away from the keyboard.

Fyi I have commissioned apps to be delivered on both android and apple handsets, as well as having had developed bespoke reporting tools used within the uk energy industry.

Whilst not having direct access to amazons own in house developers, i can draw my own conclusions based on my experience in development. I know how much our developers cost, what they are capable of and how much they cost. When i compare our budget to the resources amazon have available, all other things being equal (developer costs and skillset), then the only logical conclusion i can draw is that the functionality omissions are by design.

Maybe im wrong and these functions will arrive. Though whether you choose to accept it or not, there is also the possibility that i am right, and these omissions are down to either commercial design or the fact they just didnt want to bother going to that expense on developers delivering functionality that doesnt provide them (amazon/sonos) with any extra value.

Whether you are right or wrong, your cheap shots at the Sonos developers were cowardly and pure vitriol. Dial it back a bit and maybe people will take you seriously. This is a middle to high priced music system, a leisure activity toy of the upper classes. To be insulting the talent level of people you dont know over not getting your pet features is juvenile nonsense, the stuff of game console and comic book forums. Sorry to be so blunt, but if you actually do have the experience you claim (not that it is even close to qualifying one to comment on this implementation), you would do well to act your frigging age.

I think you misinterpret my posts.

Far from belittling the developers at sonos/amazon, my conclusion is that they are easily capable of delivering the "missing" functionality, and my personal opinion is that they were never instructed to deliver it in the first place.

In short, the highly skilled developers have delivered exactly what the accountants wanted them to. And those same highly skilled developers will deliver the missing features when the accountants tell them they can.

So calling something "lazy development" or saying they "didn't have the skills" isn't belittling a developer? Gee, who knew? :8

But hey, glad to see my belittling of you got you to back off on them. Baby steps.

I really hope it'll support playback from my own music library though ... fingers crossed

There's certainly a lot of interest around that, so I would expect it to be something Sonos delivers if it's possible.

[quote]My logical conclusion is that I then proceeded to offer a logical theory from the available evidence.
evidence available to myself being:
...
My logical conclusion is...
We'll have to agree to disagree because there can be no common ground here. You are not making logical conclusions. You invented, whole cloth, scenarios which you proceeded to "validate" with your misunderstanding of the technology.

It's irrelevant though, as I'm not going to convince you, and we're clogging a thread up that could be used for better discussion.

Ok now you've both traded blows, can we all just chill out a little? The Alexa Sonos update is a beta right? so expecting perfection isn't going to be realistic. What is realistic is constructive debate around an issue that may give the developers a steer on what to deal with

So calling something "lazy development" or saying they "didn't have the skills" isn't belittling a developer? Gee, who knew? :8

But hey, glad to see my belittling of you got you to back off on them. Baby steps.

You will note, as you appear to hang on my every word with a desire to disect and analyse each one, that in my post on page 4 I offered my conclusion that this was a commercially driven decision. I was never on the developer.

The scenario of lazy or unskilled development was put forward as the only other alternative. Given that the developers are easily skilled enough to achieve the functionality, it somewhat validates my original conclusion.

When all other possibilities have been discounted, what remains however implausible or ugly, has to be the truth.

The reason we dont have these functions os down to finance.

Either they didnt want to spend more developer time doing the slightly more complicated stuff and had other priorities for them, or they saw these additions as a commercial conflict with their own music services, at least for a period of time.

We'll have to agree to disagree because there can be no common ground here. You are not making logical conclusions. You invented, whole cloth, scenarios which you proceeded to "validate" with your misunderstanding of the technology.

It's irrelevant though, as I'm not going to convince you, and we're clogging a thread up that could be used for better discussion.

Have you, or have you not, got any experience of deploying any form of app using the amazon developer and amazon web services?

If you haven't, please don't assume i am misunderstanding the technology.

There are several apps out there that reference local items in a users home which alexa knows nothing about.

Alexa can for example turn on my hot water system, and while it has the thermostats listed as smart devices, it knows nothing of my hot water install but relays commands to the honeywell system which does.

Alexa does not have a full list of phrases which can be sent to IFTTT but she sends them anyway and hands off the work of interpreting the instruction to another platform.

As you are able to refresh your library content on the sonos system, it is entirely plausible that this local library index file which I believe is stored on the non volatile memory of each player (to a max of 65000 tracks) could be used in a very similar way to the list of triggers stored for an ifttt account. The list is external to the alexa system but addressable non the less.

This appears on the face of it to be technically possible from the amazon and sonos developers.

However if i were in charge of the purse strings at amazon, would i pay for developers to bring forward a solution which allowed customers to use their own storage instead of my $25 a year offering? Not until id reviewed whether the omission of such a feature encouraged the take up of my $25 offering. Once id scooped up enough of the people willing to shell out $25 instead of whinge about it on forums then id consider appeasing the rest of the customer base, and certainly so if the competition (google home) offered this functionality if and when it integrated with sonos.

For simplicity, my opinion is that this is a commercial decision and we will see a change when the competition offers this functionality. Though whats the bets google launches with the ability to address files on your google homedrive first...

Looking like its only Amazon Prime and the paid amazon music at the moment.
Spotify later in year.
I've got a free amazon music 4 month trial and a paid Google Play Music.
Spotify being "allowed" later on in the year.
I doubt amazon will allow GPM until google/ amazon depute is resolved re: google pulling plug on youtube on Echo Show. They're not friends at the moment!
So a few options, folks who dont mind paying £20 approx can upload their own library to amazon server, I'm sure this will allow playing of own music, but cant be 100% on this. Also certain rips aren't allowed.
Amazon Music is actually good but I have a prepay GPM till Dec '19
May try the £20 upload when trial ends.
Anyone know if own music works with amazon/alexa?
As for apple music etc, I doubt for near future they'll be on board.