Multiple Accounts and Google Assistant

So my wife and I just bought a Sonos Beam and got it setup. Admittedly we did little research before this purchase, we just learned that Google Assistant was added and thought it would be a nice addition and a perfect way to start our road to building out a nice sound system for our home...

Unfortunately we have been hit with disappointment after disappointment:

1st was the shoddy setup, we had to do a factory reset out of the box because for whatever reason it wouldn't go through the start up as expected. We resolved the issue, but it was annoying that this device had such a problem not even 5 minutes out of the box.

2nd was this nonsense about not being able to connect multiple accounts to the speaker - this is absolutely ridiculous. My wife setup the device and then when I created my account, thinking I was going to join the speaker and connect my accounts, I was sadly mistaken that the speaker was registered to my wife alone... how is this even still a thing? If the idea is this product is to be a part of a smart HOUSE then is should support multiple PEOPLE that live in said house. Again, we found the workaround of being able to sign in to one account and adding and connecting our different profiles for Spotify, Souncloud, etc in as different users, but it shouldn't be like this. This is a HUGE problem and I hope for how expensive these devices are that this is on someone's radar to address in the very near future.

Lastly is the deal breaker, google assistant. I now see exactly why this was delayed for so long and honestly I think it should have been delayed indefinitely until they fixed the fact that it CAN'T UNDERSTAND MULTIPLE VOICES! That is a HUGE selling point for google assistant, how they got sign off to implement it without such a key feature is beyond me. And the multiple profiles actually causes a conflict with Google Assistant where it can't choose which profile is associated with the set google assistant account. So that completely breaks the workaround we had for the 2nd issue.

As for as a speaker goes, this is a decent device. It sounds great, is aesthetically pleasing, and gets the job done for media consumption. However for this expensive product I was hoping to get more and I've been severely let down.

Does anyone have any insight as to whether or not they will be adding multiple account support in the future? More importantly will they allow Google Assistant to understand multiple voices? I highly doubt I will continue with Sonos without these features getting implemented. I could get a much cheaper sound system with the same quality that doesn't try to attempt features it doesn't do well.

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Hello Sergio, I just purchased a Sonos one on the promise of upgrading the sound of my average google home. The inability of Sonos one to manage multiple account on google assistant is indeed a deal breaker. We use the home as a jukebox. Every family member using his/her account. I will revert to Google home and inferior sound as long as this feature is not implemented. A dissatisfied customer shares its frustration with 7 people. A satisfied one only spread the word to one or two. I am VERY disappointed.

I came to the forum today for this very specific issue. Now that I'm panning to put Sonos spearker in more rooms of house this is an issue.

My daughter's spotify account does not allow explicit music but if she is stuck using my account cause Sonos cannot recognize who's voice.... well, that's a huge issue.

Is voice recognition part of Google assistant? So what's the deal.

For non-voice speakers, my google mini's get the job done.... properly but this was not my desired setup.

Any update on this?

You can only use One Sonos account on your devices, but you can have multiple Spotify accounts linked to Sonos. If you plan on buying new speakers your daughter could only use Airplay or the Spotify app to play to the Sonos speakers in your home. Without the Sonos app she would only be able to use her Spotify account, with all the restrictions you put on that.

Since the Sonos account is a purely administrative thing that you only need to configure the system and add speakers, I don't really see why there is a need to have multiple accounts for different people in the same household. Think of it as an "administrator account".

Adding our separate streaming services accounts and binding them to the Sonos controller our personal devices has worked fine in my home.

Regarding voice match, I don't see why the hardware couldn't support it. It is likely to do with the software implementation of Google Assistant. Maybe Google is even restricting it.

This is good info, unfortunately Airplay is a mute point for me. I have never been in Apples eco system. My daughter who is 10 and just at the age that I'm considering giving her a cell phone, so she doesn't use the app. She uses voice commands which is perfectly fine with her Google home mini since it recognizes her voice and streams from the appropriate account.

She does however have an old child's tablet. Maybe I can load the apps on that.

There is indeed more to the google assistant than streaming although it is a key feature. Being able to have multiple google assistant accounts on the same device is essential. Each family member should be able to ask about their day’s schedule, and each add items to their shopping list. As for streaming I fully support Ravica3: when your main UI is voice, not the Sonos app, the assistant has to be able to differentiate between users, albeit they all live under the same roof.

Again, when will Sonos support this key feature?

This is a good point on the Sonos App. I'll get my peeps setup in the app. Could be a good bandaid for the time being. They are heavily depended on voice control though.

We are unable to invoke personal GA routines using voice match across multiple house members via the Sonos One. Isn't this obvious? When will Sonos support this mission critical feature?

As OP, I find that the whole experience of Sonos + Google home + Spotify is indeed a very very confusing experience of different interlinked accounts and the feeling that you are not in control anymore. It dawned on us when I was at home and accidently disconnected my wife's Spotify streaming whilst in her car, that this will be a huge disaster because she have gym classes and she plays Spotify lists in the hall. That's a big no no. I'm not giving up on it just yet, just need to figure out how to streamline this in a family of four.

Assistant has been a disaster from the start. I'm still not sure why it took them so long to produce something so bad. Don't expect an any any time soon.

I've bought 2 Ones last week. I'm very impressed with the sound quality. I've also bought the One for Google Assistant functionality. We used a Google Home mini before, which worked great.

The use of Google Assistant is basic functionality in my opinion. Unfortunately this does not work very well on the Sonos in my experience.

We are a family of 3 and we all want to use the Google assistant with our own account. The One does not even respond to the voice of my wife properly. There is a major difference (at least in the Dutch language) between the Google Home mini and the Sonos One for Google Assistant. Come on Sonos make sure the Google Assistant functionality works great like it should. It took more than a year to implement the Google Assistant functionality for the Sonos One. Please fix these issues.

I wanted to move the Google Home mini to our bedroom, but now I've removed the Google Assistant functionality from the Sonos and reinstalled the Google Home mini again...

I know exactly what you mean @silverfishy

Question, Are you using your GA Mini to launch music on your Sonos speakers?
If you are doing this, does it allow to use your individual music accounts?

Sonos Product Team - any update? Can you please share the roadmap of enhancements and fixes? We would appreciate transparency given we are dedicated loyal customers. Please do not give us a reason to leave the Sonos product line. Thank you.

Really frustrating that this issue still has not been resolved. I cannot recommend this speaker for anyone who wants a Sonos One specifically for the Google Assistant features. We have 3 Sonos Ones and at this stage I am probably going to get rid of them and purchase something else that does work with multiple Google Accounts.

I bought a Sonos One to replace a Google Home Mini because I wanted better sound quality. So far i love it with this one exception. If it supported multiple Google Assistant users, it would be perfect! As it is, we’re considering returning the device.

I was in the exact same situation as you, just wanting a Google Speaker with better sound.

Have done a lot of research and for now I have narrowed my options to two possibilities. My first option was a Google Home Max. The Max is much larger, and wont be suitable in some of my smaller rooms I would like to place smart speakers.

My other option is the LG WK7. Unlike the Sonos which requires the rather clunky Sonos App, it natively runs Google Assistant. You set up the WK7 the exact same way as you would a regular Google speaker using the Google Home app. It has native Chromecast support, and Google has now included stereo pairing support for its speakers so it has pretty much all the functionality and more of the Sonos One. Its form factor is similar to the Sonos One and apparently the sound quality is pretty good. LG got Meridian Audio to design the speakers for the device so its a quality setup.

I also bought a Sonos One to replace a Google Home Mini because I wanted better sound quality. So far i love it with this one exception. If it supported multiple Google Assistant users, it would be perfect! As it is, we’re considering returning the device.

BUMP BUMP.

Same problem here… I waited for 2 years to get the google assistant support in Italy on my sonos One (it should be available from the beginning, according to sonos...) and now I can’t use it with different voice profiles? What’s the point of that? If my wife invokes spotify thru sonos one it uses my spotify account and not her account, it’s unusable!

Hmm. At my house we haven’t decided which assistant to go with (we use both). The one nice thing about Alexa is that you can, in the Alexa app, indicate which speakers (plural, and can be anywhere in the house) are the default speakers for a room.

Google can’t do that (Sonos not allowed as default speaker, and you have to say which room, which means no multiple speaker unless stereo pair, etc) BUT Google (at least when using their own speakers) will voice match which spotify account, which we use (since we are on a family account) but I haven’t been able to do that on Alexa (you have to manually switch accounts, at least last time I checked).

For the Google side I would need them to solve the multi-voice profile and the ability to set multiple default speakers for a room to make the Google side win out.

I’m curious if this purely a Sonos issue, probably more complicated than that. Wouldn’t be surprised if this requires Google to make updates too.

don’t try to find an excuse for sonos, the issue is clearly on their side, not google.

Google mini devices with assistant works flawlessy, detecting voices correctly and switching music services according to the talking users.

Sonos doesn’t.

So it’s a bad implementation by sonos, maybe the reason is that sonos speakers are binded to the “owner” account and the authentication occurs between the sonos owners account and the google owners account… I hope it’s not the case, because if this is the reason, is a really bad implementation choice and very difficult to fix.

No excuses for Sonos, but these things always end up being more complicated and definitely depend on the APIs provided by Google and Amazon. Like I said, for me on the Google side more than one thing needs to be updated. Generally Google and Amazon are getting remarkably close in the key areas for me but neither are 100% there (Amazon is slightly closer) . Regardless, I’d love for Sonos to be 100% equivalent to the native devices because I’d love to replace almost all of my Echos and Home Minis with Ones. Hope the platform holders and Sonos can work it out.

The API’s works good for other non-google speaker, (jbl i.e.) sonos doesn’t :)

I bought sonos one to have a better sound device than google/alexa and I ended up with a non-assistant device in both scenario. As Google assistant device it doesn’t recognize users, as alexa speaker in Italy we don’t have household and sonos recognize correctly the voices, but can’t use a different spotify account (and this is amazon fault)

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