Google Assistant can't stop the music

[Burnside]

Alexa can misbehave like that from time to time when a simple "stop" or "stop the music" doesn't work - that's why I have that Silence routine. Another workaround is to switch away from the currently streaming tracks and switch to playing a Tunein radio station, then ask it to stop which seems to work better - that's just a little more difficult in a routine, but adding a duration to the play radio command can help mitigate that.

 

[Wiimer]

Curious as to whether Alexa is as problematic in complying with streaming-related commands. In addition with the issues raised in this post, I have an ongoing problem with Google Home and my Naim devices.

Bear in mind here, that what I’m doing is troubleshooting a workaround. The natural command - Stop playing music - still doesn’t work.

I am also an Alexa user, and I think Alexa is superior to Google home when it comes to music control (especially, on Amazon music).

In Alexa routines, apart from the speaker you speak to, you may also be able to specify the speaker that actually performs the operation; you can also specify a WiiM device.

There is also an action to stop the music. With this action, you can choose between 3 methods.

1) Stop the audio on the device associated with the routine.
2) Stop by specifying a device name.
3) Stop all devices.

In my experience, the most reliable way is to specify the WiiM device as the running speaker and stop the audio using method 1. However, I have both actions 1 and 2 set in my routine to avoid occasional failures.

 

[jegreenwood]

By any chance, have you tried the JRiver skill for Alexa - allowing you to control a JRiver-based music library? I bought a Pop and tried it experimentally, but I have not used it in a real world context.

My library is more than 50% classical and issuing a command to - say - play one of my dozen or so versions of Beethoven’s 5th symphony would seemingly be problematic (but not necessarily impossible).

 

[Wiimer]

By any chance, have you tried the JRiver skill for Alexa - allowing you to control a JRiver-based music library? I bought a Pop and tried it experimentally, but I have not used it in a real world context.

My library is more than 50% classical and issuing a command to - say - play one of my dozen or so versions of Beethoven’s 5th symphony would seemingly be problematic (but not necessarily impossible).

Sorry, unfortunately I have never used JRiver skill because I don't have the library.

 

[Wiimer]

By any chance, have you tried the JRiver skill for Alexa - allowing you to control a JRiver-based music library? I bought a Pop and tried it experimentally, but I have not used it in a real world context.

My library is more than 50% classical and issuing a command to - say - play one of my dozen or so versions of Beethoven’s 5th symphony would seemingly be problematic (but not necessarily impossible).

As you probably know, if you create a routine in the Alexa app, you can voice control it with the mic button on the WiiM remote. You might want to give it a try

 

[Burnside]

By any chance, have you tried the JRiver skill for Alexa - allowing you to control a JRiver-based music library? I bought a Pop and tried it experimentally, but I have not used it in a real world context.

My library is more than 50% classical and issuing a command to - say - play one of my dozen or so versions of Beethoven’s 5th symphony would seemingly be problematic (but not necessarily impossible).

Years ago I for try an Alexa skill called house band with river iirc, but it’s long gone. I think there is a jriver skill now but I haven’t tried that.

I was always hoping someone would have developed an interactive, conversational skill that would allow you to select classical pieces iteratively e.g. ask for the composer, then ask for their symphonies, then maybe those by a particular orchestra or conductor, specifying which movements etc. Maybe that’s something the upcoming Alexa+ AI service will allow you to do.

 

[jegreenwood]

Re: playlists

I have a free YouTube account (originally a Google Music account), and I found an old thread that indicates that you can’t play playlists of your own uploaded music from a free account. This was not the case with Google music, and I thought I had done it more recently, but maybe I’ve only played albums. (I have a Sublime Qobuz account, which I use daily, and uploaded the tracks to Google Music many years ago simply to give me access to a subset of my own library on the go. I find I very rarely access them this way.)

 

[jegreenwood]

As you probably know, if you create a routine in the Alexa app, you can voice control it with the mic button on the WiiM remote. You might want to give it a try

Thanks - as I mentioned, I did test it with a Pop.

Right now my home setup includes JRiver for DLNA, LMS (rarely used at present), ChromeCast for several Google products, and Siri on my iPhone - ridiculous, I know. And of course my Naim products (which are in my primary systems) know nothing of Alexa. Absent a total meltdown of Google, I’m going to hang on to it.