Siri+AppleMusic vs Alexa+Spotify+Sonos?

[Twill]

Hi,



I’m thinking about making a move in to the smart speaker market and, like a lot of people, are weighing up the Sonos+Alexa+Spotify route vs the Homepod option.



I have quite an Appleish house, but even by my standards the Homepod is pretty closed off. It at least needs live radio from TuneIn before it can hope to take a place in the bedroom for example.



That’s not my query though. My query is about how Spotify works with Alexa on the Sons?



I’m an Apple Music subscriber currently, so obviously if I go the Sons route this means switching to Spotify, but I don’t know a great deal about how Spotify works, and particularly about how its algorithms curate music for you and how well embedded this functionality is on the Sons with Alexa control?



I like, for example, being able to tell Siri on my phone to play me ‘something loud’, and she’ll curate an instant playlist of tracks that are both loud in nature, but also, crucially, that are considered by the Apple Music algorithms to be songs I’d quite like.



Does Spotify do this, and if so, does that functionality work through Alexa on the Sons? Could I say ‘Alexa, play me some jazz’, and have Spotify serve up an auto-curated playlist of jazz it thinks I’ll like?



It’s not clear from reading around the differences between Spotify and Apple Music whether Spotify does this. I know they have the Discover Weekly playlist and other algorithmically generated personalised playlists, but I can’t find out if Spotify can generate personalised playlists built around a specific genre or style in the same way that Siri and Apple Music can.



Sorry, a long enquiry. Interested in any thoughts.



Cheers.

 

[daveh75]

Sonos supports Apple Music, and they're working on Siri integration (and Google Assistant for that matter)

https://9to5mac.com/2018/02/03/sonos-ceo-competing-with-homepod/

 

[Twill]

Hi,

Yes, thanks, I know Sonos supports Apple Music, but not, as far as I'm aware, with Alexa control, and even when Siri support comes in the future I heard you'll need to talk to your iOS device to make it work, rather than straight to the speaker.

 

[andyjm]

I have echo / sonos / spotify - primarily as an experiment to see how it worked.

Frankly, its not bad. You load sonos and spotify support as separate 'skills', and from what I understand the 'skills' are not Amazon authored, but are produced by third parties using Amazon provided APIs. The functionality of the 'skill' depends on quality of the job done by the third party.

I don't control spotify directly, but use it as a source for sonos, so I am afraid I can't answer your questions about curation and lists, but the overall integration is pretty good. You would need to find out the author of the spotify skill (spotify themselves?) and check to see what functionality it has to see if it meets your needs.

Google's product apparently is better than the echo for understanding natural language, and you do have to be careful with sentence construction if you want the echo to work properly. Something like 'Alexa, play layla by eric clapton from spotify on dad's office' will work, but it can get a bit convoluted. I don't have direct experience, but reviews say Siri comes a poor third in comparison to Google and Amazon for language ability.

One downside is that as soon as you say 'Alexa', the echo drops the volume on the sonos (I guess to reduce background noise) - pretty smart except the echo doesn't know where it is in relation to the sonos, so if you have a multi room system it drops the volume on all sonos boxes. This can lead to significant wife irritation.

The sonos skill functionality isn't complete, some of grouping and control functions still have to be done on a PC or tablet. One unexpected bonus is that the sound quality from the echo is surprisingly good. Not quite Play:1 quality, but for less than half the price of the sonos, its a lot more than half the sound quality. I had been waiting for the 'unwanted christmas present' Play:1s to appear on ebay to buy for the kids bedrooms, but I have gone with new echos instead.

If I were you, at £50 for the echo dot I would just buy one to try (although I think the full size echo at £90 is probably better value).

 

[bigboss]

I use Sonos and Spotify with Alexa control. It works brilliantly. I can say, "Alexa, play some jazz" and it automatically compiles a jazz playlist.

Sonos One has Alexa built-in and is excellent.

Check this:

https://thenextweb.com/apple/2018/02/14/apples-homepod-bested-by-google-home-max-sonos-in-blind-test/

 

[Twill]

That's really useful folks, thanks. I'm particularly interested to hear that Spotify through Sonos via Alexa can just 'play some jazz'. I know Siri and Homepod lag a long way behind in a lot of ways when it comes to smart speakers, but one thing that Siri is very good at is digging up music from Apple Music based on vague requests that are the kind of thing you're likely to use when you're not sure what you feel like listening to.

'Siri, play something I'll like' for example is a go to command when I'm feeling non-committal.

My concern is that, because Spotify did not specifically design their service to work with voice control, it might not be quite so well configured for serving up music to you when you're not sure quite what you want yourself.

I was sure voice commands for very specific instructions would work fine, like 'Alexa, play my Angry Little Man playlist', but when it comes to browsing and perusing and just slapping on some tunes when you don't know quite what you're looking for, I wasn't sure how good Spotify and Alexa would play together in that instance.

Can Spotify start a radio station of similar songs to the one you're listening to using Alexa through Sonos? that's another handy feature for those uncertain times.

Cheers.

 

[bigboss]

Alexa can start a station of your preference, or what Alexa thinks you might like. When I say, "Alexa, play some music", she says, "Here's a station you might like", which could either be an artist or a genre based on your past listening.

I don't think Alexa + Spotify is in any way inferior to Siri + Apple music, with the added advantage of flexibility of choosing music services and radio stations. I can simply say, "Alexa, play radio BBC 2" for BBC Radio 2.

 

[bigboss]

Check this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201601830

 

[andyjm]

Check this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201601830

This is very helpful.

It is a bit more involved if you have a multi room sonos setup, as echo will try to play the music on itself unless you tell it where to play it, so you need an 'on xxxx' at the end of each command. I think you can use 'on everywhere', but I did read that some of the sonos grouping ('upstairs' for example) didn't work properly. I guess one of the good things about a cloud based system is it keeps getting updated without you having to do anything - although I have noticed that sonos itself seems to need updating a lot more frequently than it used to.