Alexa & Sonos - what is is likely to offer?

I appreciate that nothing much, if at all, can be officially revealed regarding Alexa and Sonos, but when I tested a Dot, I could only access Spotify. Now i am a subscriber to Apple Music. I'm guessing I will not be able to access Apple through my Sonos with Alexa but as my library is stored on an NAS can someone speculate(!) if I will be able to access my library with Alexa?
Thanks.

We can speculate all we like!

This one isn't so clear cut for me. I have Amazon music by dint of having Amazon Prime but don't use it an awful lot. Most of my listening is TuneIn radio and if I listen to Podcasts or My Music it is from my NAS.
But we also know that Sonos are focussing more on the music services (streaming) as their own research shows something like 80% of music listened to is via that method. So you can be sure their implementation of Alexa will have this in mind.
Does this mean they will ignore people with local libraries? I would not have thought so and to be honest I expect that when talking to Alexa you will have to specify the following:- Sonos, Source of Music, what to play, where to play or maybe Sonos, Continue or Sonos, Stop, Where

Who knows?

Either way I suspect there will be many tweaks, bug fixes and improvements over the coming years.

I bought an Echo in anticipation of this but ultimately have no idea if it will take over my use of the iPad as controller.

Thanks for that. Appreciated. Didn't want or expect answers, just expectations and opinions.

I love my Sonos but unfortunately I have to say that the Sonos idea of customer relations is the pits. They treat their customers with pretty much utter contempt. I don't think I have ever seen Sonos give a decent reply to any RFIs and Echo integration is only one area where they completely ignore us, for an even better example take a look at Audible. We have literally been waiting years for them to reinstate this with little or no comment from them. If I could afford it I would replace all my Sonos equipment.

There was an article written, linked in another thread, that stated the voice command will be something like "Alexa, play XXXX in the living room. That makes me think that the integration will use Sonos configured sources, not Alexa configured sources. That's not definitive though.

On one hand, I can see where Amazon insist that there sources are used. They are the bigger player here, and they probably don't want to do the integration only for users to go play music off of Google or Apple. I don't know how much they care about that though, particularly if it could tick off a lot of Sonos customers.

Using Sonos music sources makes a lot of sense though. Sonos has a lot more sources and Amazon is one of them. I'd bet that most of the Echo/Sonos customers are not going to change what music source they prefer with this integration.

I think Sonos also makes sense technically. If Sonos is the source, then Alexa just translates the voice command to text and forwards it on to Sonos. Sonos does all the work from there. The other way around, Alexa has to process the request and then constantly stream to Sonos. It's probably a handoff of some sort, but it stll has to be aware of what's going on with Sonos to some extent.

There is also the need to switch control of playback using Alexa or the Sonos controllers. If your using Sonos sources, you can initiate play with Alexa, then go to your Sonos controller to skip to the next song. If Alexa sources are used, it seems like it would be a lot more challenged to then do control over that source from a Sonos controller.

Another comes to mind is, which method of integration is more easily portable to other voice controllers and music systems? If you're using Alexa sources, I think that would be less portable, a more complicated API. And it really doesn't fit the way Alexa skills typically work as I understand it. But if you're using Sonos source, I think it's a cleaner integration, and easy to for Amazon to reuse with Bose (or whoever), as well as for Sonos to use with Google (or whoever).

But it's just speculation, and I am biased for sure.

I love my Sonos but unfortunately I have to say that the Sonos idea of customer relations is the pits. They treat their customers with pretty much utter contempt. I don't think I have ever seen Sonos give a decent reply to any RFIs and Echo integration is only one area where they completely ignore us, for an even better example take a look at Audible. We have literally been waiting years for them to reinstate this with little or no comment from them. If I could afford it I would replace all my Sonos equipment.

Thanks for your completely off topic rant in a thread asking for comments on how the Echo integration should work, not comments on Sonos customer relations. Because there's not another eleventy six other topics for that.. :8

I too hope that it will Alexa / Sonos implementation will support the Sonos supported music services as I use Apple Music and do have an Echo dot.... I also plan to buy Echo Dots for the other rooms with Sonos speakers in. BUT if it does not support Apple Music it won't be of any use to me.

I would hazard a guess that Alexa will be the controller for the Sonos system and not simply that Sonos becomes the speaker for Alexa.

Looking forward to this

I think it is correct to expect Alexa to be a controller for Sonos . I don't expect Amazon to be pushing any speech or Alexa content sources to Sonos speakers.

I am curious though if there will be any deeper integration beyond music selection and transport control. Some of the things that make listening to music on an Echo so popular in our household is the way it intuitively adjusts to accommodate user interaction. For example:

-If you are listening to music and decide to change to something else Alexa will reduce the volume of the current program while you are issuing the commands for the new music selection. It would not be as nice if the music was still blasting at full volume while you were trying to talk to Alexa.

-If you accept an intercom or external call on an Echo while listening to music it will mute the music during the duration of the call and automatically resume when you hang up.

-If you listen to Amazon music in a room with a Show the artwork and lyrics display automatically... it surprised me just how popular this is at our house.

I hope some of this makes it into the Sonos integration user experience.

Some interesting ideas there.

Regarding the display of artwork and lyrics, I don't see how this would be possible as neither Sonos or Echo have video out

Some interesting ideas there.

Regarding the display of artwork and lyrics, I don't see how this would be possible as neither Sonos or Echo have video out

I agree it is not likely but certainly possible. There could be a skill on an Echo Show that shows lyrics in real time for music played on a given Sonos player or group if the source service supports it.

Of course! Sorry ... I completely forgot about the screen equipped Echo Show! 😃

I like @upstatemike's ideas, but I would be surprised if we see this in the first version. For one thing, I expect the integration to be somewhat 'stateless'. By that I mean that Alexa won't know what room it's in, won't know what speakers are in the same room, or what those speakers are currently doing. Sonos won't know what Alexa is doing either. If was 'state' then Alexa and Sonos would be more tightly integrated and more aware of where it is and what else is going on in the ecosystem.

So for example, in order for Alexa to automatically mute the system when it receives a command, it would have to know that sonos speakers in the same room are currently playing music. You wouldn't want your bedroom speakers muted while you're talking to Alexa in the kitchen.

As for showing lyrics on the Show, I think that again would require a much stronger/tigher integration then necessary. It might be fairly easy to do so if Amazon Alexa was the music source, but to remain in sync, there would need to be a lot of feedback between Sonos and Alexa. What if you started a song through Alexa, but then paused in with the Sonos app? You wouldn't want the lyrics to keep scrolling, so there would need to feedback whenever something changes on one of the two sides.

I agree that this would be great functionality though. And....many of the issues would be naturally resolved with a Sonos device with Alexa built in. I can see where they use functionality like this as a motivation for buying a new product instead of your exiting speaker and a dot.

I'm not sure how the scrolling lyrics work but I think it is tied to the position (time readout) of the song. If so the lyric scrolling would pause when the song is paused regardless of the mechanism used to pause it.

I have a "no longer used" Play5 Gen1 in the kitchen where everyone used the Echo, and now are using the Echo Show, instead of Sonos. I am going to leave it in place until the integration is released so I have it available for testing. It will be interesting to see if people choose to use Alexa voice control to play better fidelity music through the Play5 or if they stick with "good enough" fidelity on the Show so they can keep their lyrics display and auto muting.

Another interesting test will be the Living Room + Dining Room + Library which I always group together when entertaining. Will it be better to have a dot in each room along with the Sonos speaker so the group can be controlled from any of the rooms? Or will it be more popular to have a single Echo Show in one of the rooms connected via Bluetooth to a multi-zone amp feeding the three locations? The second option lets guests see the music artwork and scrolling lyrics but provides only a single location for voice control.

Lots to try when the integration is released and I can't predict for sure what configurations are going to end up most popular when all is said and done.

For echo show to show lyrics and play to Sonos that would mean using echo music source (not really want we want as far as getting all sonos music sources)

Amazon prime music - note for the echo users here. With prime you get limited selection of music. They have their premium tier amazon music that I believe is like $9 per month now on sale for 99cwnt over next few months. Worth checking out as another music source for Sonos and Echo while it's cheap.

Lyrics would not work for all sources but it might work for more than just Amazon Music if other services have an API that supports it. The communication would be between the music service and an Echo Skill developed by whoever, and not necessarily the core integration so no reason for it to be limited to an Echo music source.

Probably wishful thinking. The echo is either going to use its own API accessed by Sonos which supports lyrics) and limited to echo sources or use Sonos API to access Sonos sources (but no support for lyrics). I would think most users would rather have the Sonos Api route and no lyrics but all Sonos sources. Otherwise it's lyrics and the echo sources (which hopefully start expanding beyond their limited few)

I have Sonos and just bought Alexia. Please Sonos, we need you working with Alexia.