Sonos in Car

Ok. So can we get a physical Sonos car box to plug into our car via USB? I’ll happily purchase one. I’ll pay $350 for it.

Or, can you update the app to absorb the playlist from the physical box, enable Bluetooth on the app, and allow that to play the playlist in the car? If so I’ll pay the same price for the Bluetooth-enabled app.

I’ll happily settle for either of the solutions above if either is possible. Curious, have your users expressed playing Sonos in the car previously? It’s hard to imagine I’m the first one to ever suggest that. For every person who’s ever suggested it, that means many dozens more per suggester wish to do the same.

With enough effort and hardware I may be able to find a way to make everything work in the car now. I’m assuming Sonos could come up with a much better solution if there’s ample interest to warrant it. Have you ever surveyed users on this topic? Just curious. Thank you.

Because of the things you want changed in the way Sonos works (make the app much more important, keeping playlists that in the Sonos system are stored on the devices themselves, making it into a bluetooth music player) I do not see Sonos doing this - making the app into a bluetooth player would not require you to invest in Sonos hardware anymore.

And to me it seems a rather big change for a rather particular problem: playing multi-source Sonos playlists in your car. 

All right. Thanks for your responses. It’s a terrific solution for in the home that Sonos had the vision to see. I hope some company in the future develops an equally good solution for the car. Thanks again for the discussion.

It’s been invented already.  It’s called Spotify + Bluetooth.  The marginal cost is zero.

From what I’ve seen USB ports in automobiles are used so that the audio system can read and play music files.  It’s not a streaming source.  However, a lot of vehicles do have aux inputs which could be used.

Obviously, people can stream through blue tooth already, and it’s rather common.  If Sonos did do this,  I doubt that it would be a one time $350 fee.  There’s a reason no other app costs  anywhere near this.  I imainge that it would be a free service, with Sonos radio only since that’s their revenue source, or you’d have to pay a subscription fee.  And as has said before doubtful, hard to believe people are going to want to pay a subscription fee on top of their existing subscription fee for streaming just to mix the services together.

There probably has been, but nothing compared to other requests.  Just FYI, Sonos does have data related to this.  They know which households have more than one streaming services said, and use Sonos playlists to mix them together.  So they have a baseline of how big of a market could potentially be.  They also would know (or find out through research) that a lot of users are going to want more than just a bluetooth connection, they’ll want the app to work through Carplay or Android Auto  or something similar, they’ll want voice control, etc.  

For reference, I have WiFi in my vehicle and have a android tablet installed as a headunit to control the audio system.  I have tried (not very hard) to connect my Move to the vehicle’s WiFi, and then I would be able to use the android tablet or my phone to control the Move.  Didn’t work, certainly not easily anyway.  It’s not that I wanted the Move to be the vehicle’s audio system, but so that I could use the Move while the vehicle’s parked for outside audio at the beach or park or something.  Not that useful since I could just switch over to bluetooth, but I tried.

Anyway, although I like the idea of Sonos in my vehicle, I wouldn’t use it.  I use the Amazon app on the tablet 90% of the time, other streaming apps other times.  I primarily use Amazon at home, and I have Alexa voice control.  The Amazon app will also play tracks I have on a attached USB drive.  I can use Alexa cast to transfer what I’m listening to my Sonos at home if I wish.

None of us has any users, and so we cannot have surveyed them.  I am thinking now that this whole thread is a joke, because nobody could be so dim as to think he was still addressing Sonos after it had been pointed out several times that that is not the case.  I’ll move on now, I think.

Somebody had referred to me as the OP or the OG or whatever it was, and I thought it was a comment from somebody at Sonos. I didn’t scrutinize it. Shoot me. :)

No, the solution has not been invented, and it’s not some singular app with Bluetooth. I’m wanting to use a playlist in the car that pulls from multiple music sources. In my case those sources are Amazon Music, Google Music, Napster, and the Microsoft One Drive. As you can see, all of those sources are Internet-based and not local, thus they should all work in the car.

I’m assuming none of you can name a single app that meets with the above request. Sonos clearly realized people would want to pull music from a variety of sources into a single playlist, and they made a terrific solution for doing so. It’s completely logical to want for this same ability to work when in the car. Maybe it’s not a need many if not most people have. But it’s definitely a desire I have, and I bet plenty of people would enjoy the ability to use their same Sonos app w/ their same playlist in the car. Some here have acted like this is some type of far-reaching request. Seriously? I’ve run Internet businesses for 25 years. 2 million people are using systems I invented. I guess I’m just used to working with innovators...

Time to stop posting folks.  Once it gets into resume measuring, the thread is lost.  

I’ve given this some thought, and just as a challenge to myself, I’m going to see if I can get it working in the car using current technology. Will be interesting!

Not exactly an app like you were thinking, but Carplay and Android Auto can, but they can’t merge playlists or operate in the way you are hoping for.  Honestly, the fact that you can’t find an app that does this already should give you some pause, that perhaps there are barriers to this you are not aware of.

Sonos created playlists back before streaming services existed (I think) to use with your music library.  I imagine it was more an easy add on that it was a fulfillment of a need.

No one is questioning that it wouldn’t be a nice feature.  The issue is whether people would pay for the feature, whether streaming services would even allow it, etc.  I think you can agree that Sonos shouldn’t do this if there is little chance of it being profitable to do so, right?

It is very much outside of Sonos wheelhouse.

Perhaps you should be looking to build this app yourself?