I would like to be on the Amazon Alexa Beta if possible.

And, I think you may have underestimated the amount of effort involved in coding such a complex system. I think Sonos recognizes the urgency, and are working on it with all due speed. Or, maybe they're surfing, and hoping that the company lasts so that they can ignore new features. Who knows? /sarcasm off

Think about the work. I need to be able to control content from how many different streaming possibilities? As well as any local content? I'm sure if I were running the code team working on it, they'd use the common phrase in software development: non-trivial, which for people like me means extraordinarily hard. I don't know how they'll be able to parse any of the local stuff on my HD, much less do searches on the streaming content. For instance, "Play Queen: A Night at the Opera on Livingroom speakers" has a multitude of loaded questions that have to be answered in able to effectively work. They are having to unpack every single answer in every situation. Voice control is a complex thing. Especially when there are so many datasets to work from (local device, multiple streaming possibilities). I don't think it's a weekend project, I suspect they've been working on it full tilt since or even before the CEO made the announcement. And I'd be willing to bet, having worked with similar teams on game software, that many of them gave up family time over the holidays in order to work on the issue.

This is just sad. I read over the weekend that the CEO and founder of the company just left due to a decline in sales as a result of people buying Echos/Google Home. We purchased an Echo and an Echo Dot over Christmas with the thought of using them with Sonos, but can find no way of directly getting on this Beta or understand how this was to work (and I am signed up for Beta testing in the app).

You would think if this was such an urgency with declining sales that Sonos would get this out asap. They are a small company and should be nimble, but aren't. This seems to be an ongoing problem and the larger issue is the Sonos app has lots of usability problems that the company is not fixing. There are a couple glaring problems that have obvious solutions that I and others have sent in numerous times and years go by without fixing them.

Unfortunately for Sonos, after having Alexa for a couple weeks and realizing how useless its search capabilities are over time, i tried a Google Home to compare. Not only is it way better than Alexa in capability and sound, it also groups and syncs speakers like Sonos but better with less usability problems. It also handles video content and can fling youtube and netflix videos plus family photos to our TV on command via our $35 chromecast. At this point, I'm very close to selling off all my Sonos speakers and standardizing on google home. I wish that weren't the case....

Thanks for your interest in helping out! You'll want to make sure you've signed up on your account page here: http://www.sonos.com/myaccount/beta to say you'd like to help test. That is a general page showing interest in testing anything out, but they select testers out of that list when any beta program starts up or has room to add more people.

I don't have any specifics on the Alexa beta, and technically can't confirm if it's in testing or when that will happen, but we definitely appreciate the willingness to help out.

Oh i won't defect from Alexa but sure would be sweet to use my Sonos with it. I'm not a big fan of having to use their program to get use out of it. It reminds me of using an old Sony mp3 player.