So how do i tell alexa to play an AppleMusic playlist, or a sonos playlist?

Hi Mark, Apple Music and Sonos Playlists aren't supported as sources to start playback from using Alexa. Once a playlist is playing, Alexa can pause, change tracks, and adjust volume.

seems pretty worthless if I can't even tell it to play my music

All Sonos has said they will do and have done is incorporated Alexa for voice control. What Alexa won't do at this time on Amazon hardware for Amazon customers isn't possible via Sonos either, where it comes to initiating playback; subsequent commands are available for the cost of the Dot - no charges by Sonos.

I can however see a significant increase of Amazon Music subscriptions coming out of the Sonos user base and I suspect Amazon will carefully weigh the pros/cons of allowing Alexa to initiate music from other streamed sources, while doing so from a local NAS supplied Sonos playlists faces some fundamental architectural issues.

The only two built-in music services on the Alexa devices are Amazon Music and Spotify. Spotify is also not available if you group 2 echos (also 'coming soon'). Forcing users over to Amazon Music is unlikely to be the reason why other services aren't available - it's a software/hardware issue.

When Airplay 2 is added then that should open up Siri control of Apple Music. Although what Sonos hardware that would work on remains unclear, as does much else.

It amazes me that people whine about a fantastic enhancement to their existing Sonos devices, which cost them nothing, because they expected it to do something that was never promised.

It amazes me that people whine about a fantastic enhancement to their existing Sonos devices, which cost them nothing, because they expected it to do something that was never promised.

nobody said we expect it to do something not promised.We're commenting on how poor the feature set is compared to competing products. I hardly call what they've done fantastic, especially since they've taken well over a year to deliver it.

If I was in the market to buy whole home audio, I probably wouldn't be looking at Sonos anymore. IMHO, they've lost their edge and sales will only decline further when apple lanch the homepods

nobody said we expect it to do something not promised.We're commenting on how poor the feature set is compared to competing products. I hardly call what they've done fantastic, especially since they've taken well over a year to deliver it.

If I was in the market to buy whole home audio, I probably wouldn't be looking at Sonos anymore. IMHO, they've lost their edge and sales will only decline further when apple lanch the homepods

What "competing products" are those? Sonos is the very first third party multi-room streamer with voice control.

What "competing products" are those? Sonos is the very first third party multi-room streamer with voice control.

Well ... not really, as we have often discussed! But, they do seem to be marginally ahead of the competition (Heos, Libratone, etc.)