X

Sonos users can now control Spotify with Alexa voice

Now you can make Spotify the default music service when asking Alexa for music on Sonos speakers. We go hands-on.

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
See full bio
Ty Pendlebury
2 min read
Sarah Tew/CNET

Sonos has enabled voice control of  Spotify via its Alexa-powered devices, including the brilliant Sonos One speaker. 

Now Sonos owners can ask Alexa for artists, songs, albums or playlists and have Spotify serve up the music. The Sonos One originally launched with a choice of either Amazon Music or Pandora  as the default music service, but Spotify went missing.

The Alexa app, which is used to set up which music service responds to song requests, now offers a choice of Amazon Music, Pandora or Spotify as the default service. That means you don't have to add the name of the service as part of your voice command to make it work. Select Spotify as the default and you can simply say, "Alexa, play Dead Kennedys," for example, and the speaker will play a playlist of the band's most popular tracks on Spotify.

Spotify control requires downloading the latest Sonos update, but I had issues installing it at first. The app told me it wouldn't allow voice features until it had been upgraded, but according to the App Store it was already up to date.

Best Cyber Monday deals for home audio 2017

+19 More
See all photos

Sonos support suggests that people similarly unable to upgrade should try the following fix:

  1. Go to the App Store
  2. Press on the Updates icon
  3. Pull down on the Updates screen, which causes it to refresh  
  4. Click on the Sonos update, which should appear afterward

After upgrading successfully with the above procedure, and choosing Spotify as my default music service in the Alexa app, it worked as expected, and just like Spotify control on Amazon's own Echo speakers. I was able to request music via the Sonos One, and it played back from Spotify. At the moment, however, requesting "stations" played back from either Pandora or Amazon.