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I am having great difficulty getting Sonos Voice Control to recognize the name of a couple of radio stations. (using SVC on ARC, Roam, and Roam2).

When I ask it to ‘Play Radio RNZ Concert’ (which is available on Sonos Radio, and I have it as a favourite) it either says ‘I can’t find that content’ or ‘you need to subscribe to service that has that’ or plays some random R&B…

(This happens even when I pronounce the ‘z’ as ‘zee’ as opposed to its proper pronunciation ‘zed’)!

I have tried renaming the station in my favourites to simply ‘Concert’ but still no joy.

So two questions -

  1. Any idea why SVC won’t recognise the name RNZ Concert (or RNZ National for that matter), and how to overcome this?
  2. If I rename a station in favourites, do I use the station’s ‘real’ name, or my given nickname when requesting it through SVC?

 

PS if I manually select the station, and ask what station is playing it says ‘AR EN ZEE Concert’ - so it appears to know the name)…

With thnaks,

Uptix

​@Uptix 

I have Bad News and Good News regarding RNZ concerts. 

Bad News:

  • Sonos Voice doesn’t recognize RNZ Concerts no matter how you pronounce or phrase it 

Good News:

  • Alexa does recognize RNZ Concerts.
  • To hear it using Alexa say the following:...“Alexa play RNZ Concerts from Tune In” or “Alexa play Radio New Zealand Concerts from Tune In”

The underlying issue:

  • Sonos Voice is not authorized for Tune In

EDIT:

  • FYI, I have SiriusXM set as my default music service not Sonos Radio; therefore it makes no difference what you set as a default service

Thank you for your reply AJ

What then is the relationship between Sonos Radio and TuneIn?

I thought TuneIn was a subset of Sonos Radio?  When I select the Sonos Radio Service, and select RNZ Concert, when it plays it says ‘Welcome to TuneIn’?  I am somewhat confused by this?

 

with thnaks,

Uptix

Tune-In is its own service. It also act as a gateway to other streaming stations. Click here to learn more. As you scroll you’ll see that Amazon is a Tune-In partner; ergo the Alexa connection.

Sonos Radio can connect you manually; however Sonos at present hasn’t negotiated an agreement to allow Sonos Voice to summon RNZ concerts via Tune-In as has been done with Amazon and its Alexa voice assistant.

Thank you for your prompt response…

FYI - I want to use Sonos Voice Control as it is fully self-contained service (no web or cloud involved).

To confuse things further it DID work when I asked for RNZ Concert just now, once.

It didn’t work for RNZ National (says ‘Sorry, I can’t find that content’), and I can’t get it to repeat my success with RNZ Concert a second time…???

 

It DOES work for WQXR, KUSC and ABC Classic Brisbane.

All of these stations have the ‘Sonos Radio’ badge on the icon when displayed on my sonos app.

Confusing!

cheers,

Uptix

I’ve resorted to using Alexa for requesting music and Sonos Voice for managing playback between devices.

My test for any smart speaker voice assistant is to ask for “Golden Ticket” by “High as a kite”. This totally stumps Sonos Voice, but Alexa manages to play it.  When it’s playing, I ask Sonos Voice to name the song and it comes up with “Golden Ticket by Higazakyte”. So I ask for it with that pronunciation - but Sonos voice can’t find it🙄

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