SoundTouch Ecosystem Update: Questions

[ViscountFishpond]

Forgive the wariness but Bose have not exactly been straightfoward on Alexa skills in the past. I have a bunch of questions arising out of the recent announcement which I'd like Bose to address directly. Mods - please respond.

1. The new Home Skill makes no mention of Spotify as a service. Can you confirm that Spotify will not work with this service?

2. The original Bose skill, as far as iIunderstand from an excluded region, did include Spotify. If Spotify ist to be excluded from the Home Skill, will the original skill be extended to other areas? Specifically, if the Home Skill won't work with Spotify will the UK get the Bose skill?

3. You say that the home skill will launch in other regions in early April.

• Can you confirm if ANY regions will be excluded from this launch?
• Can you confirm that the UK WILL be included in this launch?
• Can you confirm that ealry April means on or before April 15?
• Can you confirm that when you say April you mean April 2018?

You've misled us before and a good dose of honesty and expectation management is in order. Whenever I'm asked how my speakers are I tell people don't bother. Buy another make.

[mattius]

Mind if i jump in with a couple more?

• Security related updates to improve application configuration and operation

You don't have to go into specifics, but what are you hoping to achieve with regards to improving application operation?

• We tuned the app to include some major performance and stability improvements

Specifics? what are you hoping to achieve?

Are you being deliberatly vague so we are not dissapointed by yet another laclustre or failing release?

[Marty K.]

Would like to 2nd the question about Spotify - the list of services that the new skill supports seems like exactly what can be configured in the Alexa App, with the exception of Spotify.

[hockeymagnet]

I currently have an echo dot with a Bluetooth connection to a Soundtouch 10. I'm wondering what advantage this new skill will provide over my current setup? It's not obvious to me that this will change anything at all. The only thing I can see this doing is to allow me to also ask Alexa to play music on my Soundbar 300 instead of having to connect to that by bluetooth. and/or use another Echo device that is not connected by bluetooth to play music on the same speaker. Am I correct?

[Joel_D]

Hello ViscountFishpond and Marty K,

Thank you for the inquiries. 

1. Spotify isn't expected to be supported in the smart home skill. This might be something in the future, but not as of right now.

2. At this time there has been no communication for the other skill to be released to other regions.

3. We do not have any further information on time frame, regions that will be included or excluded. This is planned for April of 2018 for the skill to start rolling out to other regions, but no dates as of now.

Once we have confirmed information on the upcoming release of the skill in other regions, we will let the community know.

Kind Regards,

Joel - Bose Support

[Joel_D]

Hello hockeymagnet,

Thank you for posting. You are correct, the feature you described is exactly what this update will bring.

Kind Regards,

Joel - Bose Support

[ViscountFishpond]

I responded critically and my comments were deleted. I got a DM warning me. I posted a new thread inviting people to comment on whether they were happy with the way Bose has dealt with Alexa support. It got deleted. Why won't you allow discussion on the issue of your dumping Spotify in favour of other services despite your favouring Spotify in previous releases?