How useful would a Alexa skill be?

[exp0nge]

Hello,

I'm developing a Alexa skill to let users stream from different cloud platforms. So far I've integrated OneDrive and Google Play Music. I would like to gauge the interest within this community. The integration would work with the Subsonic API and therefore any server that uses that API.

EDIT: if you're interested in signing up for a beta - https://www.elasticmusic.co/contact/

[alphawave7]

YES, please. Thanks for the poll!

[blueturtles]

Yes...yes...yes!!!

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

[acroyear]

i've talked about it on other threads. I'd love to do it or see (well, hear) it. The issue is authentication. Other services use oauth, but subsonic doesn't so you'd need to develop the authentication layer first to allow the remote device to access the server, and that also depends on whether or not Alexa will serve up http (and not https) content, or https content that runs on a self-signed cert. Not unsurmountable, but more work than just "the skill" would imply.

[exp0nge]

i've talked about it on other threads. I'd love to do it or see (well, hear) it. The issue is authentication. Other services use oauth, but subsonic doesn't so you'd need to develop the authentication layer first to allow the remote device to access the server, and that also depends on whether or not Alexa will serve up http (and not https) content, or https content that runs on a self-signed cert. Not unsurmountable, but more work than just "the skill" would imply.

Since the subsonic API uses a hash of the password + a salt, I would need the password from the host owner. I have the Alexa side setup for other services (OneDrive and Google Play Music).



On another note, if anyone want's to sign up to be a beta tester, do let me know.

[bahman2000]

I created an account just to +1 this.

YES PLEASE!!!

[exp0nge]

What's like a rough estimate of how many songs you guys have?

[bahman2000]

What's like a rough estimate of how many songs you guys have?

Code: Select all

find . -type f | wc -l
9041


[Jägs]

+1 on an Alexa skill!

According to Subsonic, I have 116,363 songs.

[ebasta]

4,335 artists
12,004 albums
183,089 songs

[exp0nge]

If you're interested in doing a beta test once I get stuff setup, can you provide me your contact information here? I can send out the Skill invites once I'm ready. https://www.elasticmusic.co/contact/

[calismoonelf]

I would like to chime my support in here.

I have/had a library of about 96k tracks, much of it rare and out of print stuff. I have had a bit of a run of bad luck with hard drives lately and have lost 2 drives. One of them with all the family photos on that I am currently making payments to have recovered. When it's done I will do the same for my music.

So...Alexa would make it nice to interface.

I would love to see this.

[johnfoliot]

Anyone aware of any movement here? I'd love to be able to hook up my subsonic+MusicCabinet installation to run on Alexa devices.

Anybody?

[acroyear]

The authentication issue I wrote about 2 years ago still stands as being a larger-scale blocker. So long as the authentication is not oauth2 based, a skill can't access your data to try to interpret it through search mechanisms. For someone to write a wrapper around the server that could remember your username/password and produce it when authenticated by your amazon login (or any other oauth provider like google, apple/itunes, twitter, facebook, a few dozen others), you would have to trust the service provider that was caching it.

So there's 2 sides to getting working. One technical (someone needs to write the oauth wrapper that can produce your password for the subsonic API once you start using the authenticated device). The other more philosophical: will you trust your passwords to this service, because it can't be something you can host yourself. There's no way to make the password encrypted that the provider of the service can't decrypt, because it HAS to be decrypted in order for the skill code to use it to access the API endpoints.

[Pixelsetc]

Aware there are problems to be solved but an Alexa skill allowing me to bridge the gap between Alexa, my Sonos system and my Subsonic based music collection would be awesome, it really irks me to have to run Plex (which I detest) just for this purpose.

Without Plex I am stuck with over 70,000 songs that I cannot get Alex to search or play. Seems like a lost opportunity to me and a no-brainer given the number of Alexa based smart home devices out there. Subsonic already shows it's superiority over Plex in it's Sonos connectivity, the only thing missing is good voice control!