The Amazon Echo has a decent voice-controlled “assistant” in Alexa; too bad the speaker itself isn’t so great. Meanwhile, Sonos makes decent, web-connected speakers but without any voice control. You see where we’re going with this?

Sonos announced Tuesday that it had partnered with Amazon, and other companies, to “usher in a new era of connected home listening.”

This means that, starting in early 2017, Sonos speakers will work with Amazon’s Alexa. No, you won’t suddenly be able to shout orders at your $500 Play 5 speaker; you’ll need to have at least one of Amazon’s Alexa-enabled devices (Echo, Echo Dot, or Amazon Tap) connected to your network.

Folks who have both Sonos and one of these Amazon products will be able to ask Alexa to play music from Amazon Music, Spotify and other services and it will flow to any group of Sonos speakers in the home, Sonos says.

“Our mission is to fill every home with music,” Sonos President Patrick Spence said in a statement. “We don’t care what you listen to, how you get to it, or in what room – we just want it to be effortless, quick and epic. Alexa on Sonos will be all that, and fun too.”

In other connected device news, Sonos says that it has added Spotify Connect integration to devices, providing additional functionality to speakers that make them the only whole home sound system fully controlled by the Spotify app.

Sonos says that nearly 50% of all homes with one of its speakers uses Spotify.

“By tightly integrating the Spotify experience with the Sonos system, we’ve created an easier way for Sonos owners to get music out of their phones and playing all around their homes,” Sonos Vice President of Software Antoine Leblond says.

A software update will be available in October as part of the Sonos public beta program.

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