Playing Local Music Library on Sonos through Alexa

There is no doubt that any reasonable thinking person would expect this integration to play your local music library whatever the releases say. Are they mad? It can't be a technical issue surely, purely to fill the coffers. I have a CD collection going back to Brothers in Arms around 1980 and a Sonos system that plays them (ripped of course). I use basic Napster but why soak the Internet if much of what I want is locally stored and setup in my playlists. Seriously annoying. If you only pay for streaming services you have to do that FOR LIFE if you want music.

Seeing that the Alexa operates in the Cloud, not on your local storage, it most certainly is a technical issue. That being, Sonos would have to develop scheme in which the index which is currently housed on your Sonos players would now be housed in the cloud. This is obviously a bit more complicated than a music service, which is already accessible via the cloud.

As to the "purely to fill the coffers" accusation, Sonos offers all the playback options for local music as they do for the fully supported streaming options, except one - initializing playback. Pause, Play, Skip, Previous, Volume Control, even "Alexa, what is playing on (room name)" all work for the "unsupported" services like local music, Napster, Slacker, etc. If this implementation truly were ""purely to fill the coffers", why offer every benefit of voice control except initializing playback (which coincidentally, for local music, is the one function which requires the full redesign of the architecture stated above)? It simply doesn't add up.

I don't really get that it's a cloud issue but I admit I'm not a'cloud' developer. Assuming that you have to instruct the local device to play from some source, sure via The Cloud, then I would assume that the local Sonos system interprets the request and drives the selection, configuring and playing of the source. The source would probably be an abstracted object. Ok agreed that once started it can be controlled. Play is quite a key command I'm sure you would agree and if I'm sitting in my cosy chair I might like to just use that command. It makes the streaming services better integrated and might point you in that direction. At least that's one way of adding it up. And to be fair I'm not sure why we expect all this to come for free but it is still frustrating.

Fully agree with jgatie regarding that there are technical reasons why voice control does not currently work with local libraries. Several of us on here have put in the time to actually think about how all the integration works, as implemented, and have come to the conclusion that there are significant technical differences. Sonos staff have confirmed, in a broad sense, that this is the way it works.

I don't think that means that making a profit, for Sonos and Amazon, are completely irrelevant, I just can't conclude, at this point any way, that the Amazon/Sonos integration isn't enabling local libraries and all the music services Sonos provides purely for monetary reasons.

Out of curiosity, is any one bothered by the fact that neither Amazon, Google, or Apple (I think) can play your local files natively through their voice assistant devices?

I don't really get that it's a cloud issue but I admit I'm not a'cloud' developer. Assuming that you have to instruct the local device to play from some source, sure via The Cloud, then I would assume that the local Sonos system interprets the request and drives the selection, configuring and playing of the source. The source would probably be an abstracted object. Ok agreed that once started it can be controlled. Play is quite a key command I'm sure you would agree and if I'm sitting in my cosy chair I might like to just use that command. It makes the streaming services better integrated and might point you in that direction. At least that's one way of adding it up. And to be fair I'm not sure why we expect all this to come for free but it is still frustrating.

All logic for track selection is collected via Alexa, then processed via the Cloud, then specific play commands are sent to Sonos. In order for Alexa to process initialization of play, it needs to know what tracks are available via that source. For streaming sources, it is very easy, you simply query that source. Even better, Amazon already has this functionality available to Alexa via its own devices and supported services, it merely needs to pass the play commands over to Sonos.

However, local libraries require more work. You would either need to house a complete local index in the cloud, or you would need some type of client/server relationship between Sonos and Alexa to allow Alexa to query the local index. Either scheme is a major shift from the current architecture. Now could the priorities of what gets implemented and when conveniently line up with financial interests of one or both parties? Sure, that is often the case in any endeavor, for every company does best that which it has already done. But saying the reason local libraries are not supported is "purely to fill the coffers" is not only naive, it is demonstrably incorrect; being there is partial support for local libraries, and the one piece not supported is clearly the most technologically challenging.

Perhaps you could expand on what logic is handled and processed in The Cloud. I would expect: Alexa very cleverly interprets my voice in The Cloud and translates to a command (validating along the way) . You can see this on the Alexa website of course e.g "Add butter to shopping list". Then via the internet/cloud this command is sent to Sonos. Play Adele 21 on Kitchen. Sonos decomposes this (maybe) and plays via a source as if I had locally clicked. Default source could/should be local. Varying degrees of smartness could be used in the cloud if the music is not found where chosen. The integration is surely creating a client on Sonos that can connect to/work with Amazon/Alexa in The Cloud. Now one snag is that Sonos internal searching capabilities are not strong so maybe this is a limitation. Always surprised by that but maybe this is a key problem. It's not necessary to say I am naive or that the idea is demonstrably incorrect . Money is quite a driver and my comment did offer one scenario that could be true, weak I admit. If you could add some substance to 'clearly the most technologically challenging' like exactly what part is difficult then I would like to hear it. That's not meant as a criticism, I'd like to understand it.

Poster melvimbe did a far better summation than I ever could right here:

https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/sonos-alexa-and-local-nas-stored-music-6791479/index1.html

I'm just guessing, kind of trying to reverse engineer the process, but I think it's going to be rather difficult. There are several different hints to suggest that Amazon/Alexa is completely in charge of determine what music will play when you make a voice command. I think it goes something like this.

1 - echo hears you
2- echo sends voice to Alexa servers
3 - Alexa servers translate voice to text
4 - Alexa servers process the request, determining what music to play on what speakers
5 - Alexa sends request to Sonos cloud.
6 - Sonos cloud sends request to your speakers.

I think step 4 is the key. Alexa has to know what music you want to play BEFORE it sends the request to the sonos cloud. It never sends an 'unknown' music request to the sonos cloud. So you may have a favorites playlist on Sonos, that Sonos knows what to do with, but since Alexa doesn't know what that is, it won't process it.

So for this to change, either Alexa needs to change to send unknown request to sonos, Alexa needs to know more about your sonos setup, or the two need to have a deeper back and forth exchange/communication so that Sonos can tell Alexa that it knows what that is.

Personally, I think changing this is a long way off. It requires Amazon/Alexa to change, and I don't think they are too motivated to do so.

BTW, some of the hints I see...
- You can't request any music on Sonos that you couldn't do on Amazon speakers.
- You can't give any commands (play, pause, volume control) on Sonos speakers that you couldn't do on Echos (like group, ungroup, line in source, etc)
- Alexa tracks what music you requested on it's 'cards' and in the history for that speaker. It could not do that if it didn't understand exactly what you requested.
- There are features from Sonos existing API that are not present with the interface with Alexa.

I would hazard to guess that Sonos is doing just about everything that it can do on it's side of the fence, and Amazon is the bottleneck. I wouldn't expect to see too many new features come across unless Amazon wants to do add the features. That could be because it benefits them, or because competition forces them to do something they don't exactly want to do.

So I think we will see echo's linked to specific sonos zones soon, because Amazon would want to build that feature, they would do the same for lights so users don't have to say the specific name of a light when they are in the same room. I think we will see playing form NAS or something like that if Sonos builds an interface with Google that allows that. Amazon may be pushed to do the same to stay competitive.

As to the accuracy of his guesses, Ryan S from Sonos says:

In short, melvimbe's analysis is pretty darn good, and on point. There would be work needing to be done on both sides of things for local libraries. There needs to be a cloud listing of your local tracks available when you'd want to listen to music, also with the knowledge of where or when to tell Sonos where to go. You can expect this Alexa integration to get better over time, we're constantly working on it. But I don't have any specifics on if or when we might get local libraries included. For those new to the thread, you can still use Alexa to control what's currently playing from any source, you just can't add something to the queue or start playing from certain sources with Alexa.

Fair enough, if that's how they do it but doesn't seem very tidy. Just raises more queries than it answers so I'm going to leave it there. But I bet there are plenty of customers dissatisfied with the result.

And many of us that are pleased with version 1, and looking forward to further versions. V1 is always the hardest, adding on may be difficult, but at least they have a running platform that answers many of the basic questions.

I happen to think they've done well. And I am 99% of the time using my NAS as the source of my music.

For me, as a Sonos owner for a decade now, there are two primary problems with this release.

#1 - A large community of product users use Sonos independent of the internet, because, it was a system released prior to the majority of streaming services, and certainly before any of them became useable.
As such, the idea that they have built integration with Alexa (granted a web based service) but have now (in beta at least) leveraged all the benefits of the voice capability to streamable services only totally ignores what is undoubtedly the core ownership of the product, and certainly the most loyal. It kinda borders on the ridiculous to be frank.

#2 - Sonos was designed (in part) to be a service to allow you to control all of your local music (sheesh I still have a CR100, all that could do was my local music at the time) and for many, many, MANY years that was it's entire selling point of the product until such a time as streaming became more accessible and popular and then it became "play every song on the earth" and random hyperbole like that.
So, you build a massive user base of people who have ripped and laboriously ID3 tagged their music libraries, and then you offer them the ability to voice control their system - you tease it for a year or more - and then when you release it, you do not provide the functionality that they have primarily used the system for?
Whomever in here is saying that makes sense is vastly deluded as how easy it is to alienate a consumer base.

What's sh*tty about this whole thing is, no-one knew Sonos were going to do anything with Amazon. The ECHO and DOT were out and ok, some people might have been talking about it and maybe some people on here were saying "hey, Sonos, Alexa, hmm?, hmmmm?" but that would have been it.
It's dangerous from a companycustomer relationship standpoint to open the door to questions like "did you only announce this so people would go and buy ECHO's and DOT's thus helping Amazon sell their product when Google was hot on their heels".
Because, it wouldn't be hard to make an argument for that when you consider it was Sonos who decided to announce Alexa functionality and they did it in a way which is totally opposed to the very thing the majority of their consumers use. Why do that?, why not just say nothing if it's so difficult to add local library functionality, until you figure out a way to do it?, and then announce :?

To me, this from the press release that still sits on the Sonos website is misleading:
"Sonos owners with an Alexa-enabled device such as an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot will soon be able to use Amazon’s popular Alexa service to control their Sonos sound system"

That part of the sentence is not true today.

Now sure, the press release goes on to say:
"Simply ask Alexa to play your music from Amazon Music, Spotify and more and it will flow to any group of Sonos speakers in the home. By integrating Alexa into their Sonos sound systems, owners can use their voice to play, pause, skip, control volume and more."

But aside the fact that Spotify isn't available, so that part of the sentence is partially baloney too - the former paragraph infers a myth that the rest of the press release does nothing to dispel.
Read it for yourself > http://press-us.sonos.com/134980-sonos-with-partners-and-industry-leaders-ushers-in-new-era-of-connected-home-listening <

I have always said, as a tech geek and someone that works in the tech industry that my Sonos was the best item of tech I have ever bought, but when a company does stuff like this, they are well on their way to losing people who advocate the brand.

IMHO. A Sonos products key market is not streaming. Very few people are buying Sonos kit costing in the hundreds (and in many cases thousands) of $ to play streamable content when they probably have a TV or a iPhone doc that can do that already. I'd actually be very interested to hear someone from Sonos look at the data of new hardware purchases and tell us what those people are using the product for, because I find it hard to believe that the main and best product feature of Sonos does not remain the local library functionality... and the company would do well to remember that when they decide to release like this.

And just to comment on people saying it's a much harder task than it appears.
I as a local library users of probably 3-4Tb of music, understand that voice recognition of all my ambiguous songs and artists is tough. I get that.
However what I don't get is why the first release doesn't have the ability to play (at the very least) playlists, this would be easy enough to push/send my playlist to my 'room' and then send the [play] command to, and a simple advisory to make the playlist names 'simple' would be all that's required.
So, I'm sorry, the idea that local library functionality couldn't in any way be made available is hooey to me. Especially when I can ask Alexa to play a song and there's no problem finding a sample version of it in the Amazon library, but I can't play the full high quality file sitting in my local library. That's pretty 😞 😠 to say the least.

Just my 2p.

For me, as a Sonos owner for a decade now, there are two primary problems with this release.

#1 - A large community of product users use Sonos independent of the internet, because, it was a system released prior to the majority of streaming services, and certainly before any of them became useable.
As such, the idea that they have built integration with Alexa (granted a web based service) but have now (in beta at least) leveraged all the benefits of the voice capability to streamable services only totally ignores what is undoubtedly the core ownership of the product, and certainly the most loyal. It kinda borders on the ridiculous to be frank.

#2 - Sonos was designed (in part) to be a service to allow you to control all of your local music (sheesh I still have a CR100, all that could do was my local music at the time) and for many, many, MANY years that was it's entire selling point of the product until such a time as streaming became more accessible and popular and then it became "play every song on the earth" and random hyperbole like that.
So, you build a massive user base of people who have ripped and laboriously ID3 tagged their music libraries, and then you offer them the ability to voice control their system - you tease it for a year or more - and then when you release it, you do not provide the functionality that they have primarily used the system for?
Whomever in here is saying that makes sense is vastly deluded as how easy it is to alienate a consumer base.

What's sh*tty about this whole thing is, no-one knew Sonos were going to do anything with Amazon. The ECHO and DOT were out and ok, some people might have been talking about it and maybe some people on here were saying "hey, Sonos, Alexa, hmm?, hmmmm?" but that would have been it.
It's dangerous from a companycustomer relationship standpoint to open the door to questions like "did you only announce this so people would go and buy ECHO's and DOT's thus helping Amazon sell their product when Google was hot on their heels".
Because, it wouldn't be hard to make an argument for that when you consider it was Sonos who decided to announce Alexa functionality and they did it in a way which is totally opposed to the very thing the majority of their consumers use. Why do that?, why not just say nothing if it's so difficult to add local library functionality, until you figure out a way to do it?, and then announce :?

To me, this from the press release that still sits on the Sonos website is misleading:
"Sonos owners with an Alexa-enabled device such as an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot will soon be able to use Amazon’s popular Alexa service to control their Sonos sound system"

That part of the sentence is not true today.

Now sure, the press release goes on to say:
"Simply ask Alexa to play your music from Amazon Music, Spotify and more and it will flow to any group of Sonos speakers in the home. By integrating Alexa into their Sonos sound systems, owners can use their voice to play, pause, skip, control volume and more."

But aside the fact that Spotify isn't available, so that part of the sentence is partially baloney too - the former paragraph infers a myth that the rest of the press release does nothing to dispel.
Read it for yourself > http://press-us.sonos.com/134980-sonos-with-partners-and-industry-leaders-ushers-in-new-era-of-connected-home-listening <

I have always said, as a tech geek and someone that works in the tech industry that my Sonos was the best item of tech I have ever bought, but when a company does stuff like this, they are well on their way to losing people who advocate the brand.

IMHO. A Sonos products key market is not streaming. Very few people are buying Sonos kit costing in the hundreds (and in many cases thousands) of $ to play streamable content when they probably have a TV or a iPhone doc that can do that already. I'd actually be very interested to hear someone from Sonos look at the data of new hardware purchases and tell us what those people are using the product for, because I find it hard to believe that the main and best product feature of Sonos does not remain the local library functionality... and the company would do well to remember that when they decide to release like this.

And just to comment on people saying it's a much harder task than it appears.
I as a local library users of probably 3-4Tb of music, understand that voice recognition of all my ambiguous songs and artists is tough. I get that.
However what I don't get is why the first release doesn't have the ability to play (at the very least) playlists, this would be easy enough to push/send my playlist to my 'room' and then send the [play] command to, and a simple advisory to make the playlist names 'simple' would be all that's required.
So, I'm sorry, the idea that local library functionality couldn't in any way be made available is hooey to me. Especially when I can ask Alexa to play a song and there's no problem finding a sample version of it in the Amazon library, but I can't play the full high quality file sitting in my local library. That's pretty 😞 😠 to say the least.

Just my 2p.