That’s a good suggestion. I’ll see if I can get something like that going. I love Sonos and would love to just be able to use my Sonos playlist and app in the car.

Some people in this thread clearly just don’t get it. That’s ok. My needs being unique hardly makes me the only person who would like to use Sonos in the car. That I can assure you.

One of the greatest things about Sonos is the ability to pull music from multiple sources into a single playlist. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s just a beautiful thing that doesn’t work in the car.

You can be progressive and make something cool to allow Sonos to work in the car, or you can not do that. I’d bet anything you can come up with a solution you can sell for profit. But hey, it’s your company. I’ll still love Sonos whether you do it or not. :)

Does anyone make a device or app that does this?  OP is complaining that Sonos doesn’t do something revolutionary that other competitors also don’t do.  It’s your idea - make your app, create a service that does this, then make a connector for Sonos, and an app for phones.

This is not an awful idea, but it kind of points to OP no really understanding how Sonos works.  

Heh, it’s funny you think that the OP (that would be me) doesn’t really understand how Sonos works. I bet I understand how it works and use it in a more sophisticated way than most of your customers.

Is it really that much of a stretch to think people might like to use their Sonos app in the car? Really? This is kinda like pulling teeth. To be frank, your idea that nobody else does something and that makes it not a good idea to do it is a logical fallacy. Yes, it’s possible it’s not a good idea for your own business reasons. But that fact alone doesn’t make it so. The iPhone never existed before Steve Jobs made it. ‘Nuff said.

Why don’t you put out a survey to Sonos users and ask them if they’d like a way to use their Sonos app in the car? How hard would that be? That would certainly settle whether there really is a need  or not, wouldn’t it? Or, you can not do that. It’s your company. I’ll bet you anything there’s more people like me than you even realize. You may be looking right past a great opportunity. 

It’s also funny that you still seem to think this is Sonos staff you’re talking to. This is a user forum, as has been pointed out to you already, though Sonos staff do monitor it. Most, if not all of the replies I’ve read on here (I can’t be bothered to check through), are from users. Yet still you’re using phrases like “it’s your company”. 
 

For the record, if you want to run a quick survey here,  I do not want to use the Sonos app in my car. 

The Sonos app doesn’t play music though. Its a remote control that tells Players to play music. It provides the UX to choose the music, but all playback is done by the devices themselves. So you would need an app, and a Player (ie actual hardware).

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?

Danny, thanks for your response. 

Yes I agree Sonos should not do this if there is little chance of it being profitable. I believe in exploring ideas, entertaining discussion, brainstorming, and seeing if possibilities exists rather than shooting down ideas because nobody has done something or other before. That’s not how innovation works.

It’s not realistic for me personally to develop such an app if it’s even possible, although I suppose if it’s possible I could look into hiring it out. Clearly it would be nice if it’s something Sonos can and would do. I’m old school and only develop on the desktop. I still develop in Cold Fusion, hah. That’s how old school I am. :) 

Thanks again for your response.

Perhaps to give some background, many of us have seen variations of this idea for quite some, specifically thinking that the Sonos app is a music player and not a controller.  It’s not as if ideas are bad, we’ve seen them before and have already gone through figuring out why the idea may not be that good.  We also see what is requested most often so have some sense of what people want, very much informally and inaccurately.  As an example, one common one is to be able to use Fives as front speakers in a home theatre setting, and pretty much everyone is for that idea.  The product to make it happen has even be coined as ‘Super Connect’.

Yes, I was in college when Cold Fusion first came out.  Definitely Old School.

I think the problem with this is it pretty much has to be a hardware device.  An app that drew from several different streaming services to create a queue would probably face opposition and difficulty in achieving licensing from all the streaming partners, but hardware based probably faces less problems in that arena.  Although, I can’t tell you why I’m making that assumption, and it could be totally wrong.  It just feels like they’d see it differently, although there’s no good reason they should.

I wonder, does Roon have mixed playlists? Perhaps a Roon app on a portable device, maybe a Raspberry Pi based player.  Just brainstorming.

I would purchase the Sonos “Car Connect” in a heartbeat. I guess that’s probably pretty obvious at this point isn’t it. :)

How nice it would be to walk out the door with my same Sonos app, jump in the car, and have all my same Sonos stuff pulling in from around the Internet just like I do in the house? Sonos is so brilliant for putting together everything in the way they did it, and it’s such a downer in the car to not have all of that great stuff in one central place. 

We often get caught up on what something does currently and come up with limitations due to the way it works already. Those limitations are frequently limitations in thinking more than anything else (not saying that’s the case here necessarily), as something that hasn’t historically done something or other doesn’t mean it can’t be altered to do that thing now. Clearly this could be done in the car just like it’s already being done in the house. The app would have to change to be something more than a controller, yes. Licensing issues and/or profitability issues may preclude from doing this anyway even if it can be done, yes I get that too.

What if it turns out 5% of Sonos’ current customers would purchase the Sonos Car Connect? I don’t know if it would be worth making the product for that, but it may well be. Sonos could of course find out with a survey. Should it turn out licensing is not an issue and the product could be profitable, I’d love to see it made. It’s been on my wish list for a long time now, and I’m not taking it off. :)

I just can’t stay away from this thread… my jaw hits the floor every time I come back to it.  So what is the market size of people who have to have exactly the same playlist in the car as they have at home, drawn from multiple streaming services?  I think that’s you, @brad_switzer .  You are the potential market.  Which is the best company to build this?  Why, a company that specialises in multiroom home audio systems with an app that doesn’t play music, of course…

Keep it coming….

I agree: mind-blowing. He’s already said in an earlier post that he believes that his needs are unique, yet still expects Sonos to develop this for him. Don’t mis-understand me, brad_switzer, you’re quite entitled to have and express your wants and desires (within legal limits!!!)  but I really think your expectations are a little too high.

I’d certainly be interested if Sonos, like Bose and others, work with a car company to produce an in-car speaker system, but with the changes in background noise from engine/motor, wind and road surface I don’t see it being the same premium, tuned sound system we can get from a home installation.

You guys are bashing him for no reason.  All he has is a wish that he can have one place to go for his music experience (at home and outside home).  His baseline is the Sonos app.  Be happy for him, say yup, that would be nice for you and move on.  Why shoot down an idea.

I am actually the opposite even though I also want the same experience at home and outside the home.  The difference is that I simply never use the Sonos app.  I use either Spotify Connect or Airplay 2. My experience is the same at home and outside the home.  Couldn’t care less about multi-room whole home audio, yet I do still like my Sonos speakers.  I like having choice.  And Sonos didn’t lose a sale because of it.  It is not an all-or-nothing deal.  Perhaps if I could use the Sonos app outside the home, they would lure me in even further.

Thank you Sonosg. :)

Yes John...I said my needs are unique, and I never said I was the only person in the entire world who has this desire. That’s how you’re framing it. 5% of a community could desire something unique from the needs of the rest of a larger community. It could also be that 5% of a market is quite profitable. I’d be quite happy to sell 5% of my own customers something new if it makes me money. That all seems obvious to me but from your response apparently doesn’t seem obvious to you. I never realized wanting to use my Sonos app in the car would be viewed as some wild crazy desire way outside the box. To me that sounds like something absolutely normal and obvious one might want to do. My needs may be unique but I highly doubt that makes me completely alone in this desire. 

My world inside the home is absolutely amazing due to the Sonos app. I’ve got 5 zones so I can tap into this world anywhere I am in the house. I’d just love to add a zone 6 in the car. Now that I know that’s an absolutely crazy and unacceptable thing to desire though and I must just not get it, I’ll discontinue. By discontinue I mean I’ll discontinue the thread now. I won’t discontinue my desire for the app, and I’ll still be hoping Sonos or somebody else brings this together in the future because for me and anybody else like me, this makes perfect sense.  

For anyone who at least entertained the discussion above with an open mind, I thank you. I learned a few things here in this thread and I also want to thank you for that as well.

It’s not a terrible idea, and I kind of like my mixed source playlists at home, and it would be a “nice to have” on the go.  However, I doubt the people that want this are a large enough market share to develop for.