Siri not playing music or setting alarms - iPad Mini 32GB

Hey everyone,

I'm having some problems getting Siri to work on my iPad Mini. She will do the normal things like check the weather or carry on a nonsense conversation, but if I ask to play music or set an alarm or timer, the initial request is registered and then the light spins around for anywhere from 15 seconds to almost a full minute before telling me 'there's been a problem' or some similar error message. It used to work flawlessly until about two weeks ago.

Anybody else experiencing this problem? Half of the reason why I bought the iPad Mini in the first place was to have Siri put on music with just one button while I'm driving so I don't have to futz with touchscreen menus anymore...by the way, I have the iPad tethered to my phone in the car but it gives the same problems when using a land-based WiFi network.