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Hello everyone,

I’m new to the Sonos ecosystem. I’m potentially going to work with clients with Sonos systems. My job is to “listen” to what they play in order to make reports of what’s been listened. For this I need an output from the speakers to connect to our hardware, which has a minijack input.

If I’m not mistaken there’s no outputs available in any of the Sonos speakers, and it seems like the only way would be to purchase a Port and manage all connectivity from there, is that right? Is there any other option to catch the stream? Maybe via IP, bluetooth? I don’t need the best quality for this, and the Port seems like an overkill, pretty expensive solution.

Thanks a lot!

You could use a Port or Amp with a device in between to convert speaker level output to your minijack.    With either route though, you would need to factory reset and add add the Port/amp to your clients system  every time.  As well, the Port and Amp won’t necessarily pick up what’s playing on other Sonos speakers in the house if they aren’t grouped.

I’m not sure I get the point of this testing if quality isn’t the concern.  Are you looking at content?  Is this to develop marketing data or something of that nature?

 

 As well, the Port and Amp won’t necessarily pick up what’s playing on other Sonos speakers in the house if they aren’t grouped.

 

I miss the Sonos usage statistics that used to be available under your account at sonos.com, albeit not as granular as digging down into specific tracks played.

I think privacy laws spelled the end of that feature. 

Thanks a lot for the answer @melvimbe !

I see the complexity. The goal is to identify the music that’s played on venues to report it to the pertinent collective management organization for a fair distribution of royalties. Most of venues we work with have regular audio systems where it’s easy to take one output from a mixing desk and plug it to our devices. With venues with Sonos systems I’m not sure yet how to achieve that or if it’s even possible. The need for an extra device in each venue that costs almost 500€ may be a deal breaker for this.

Not sure if relevant for your clients, but Sonos supports several music services designed for business use that ensure the correct royalties are paid: https://www.sonos.com/en-us/business

Thanks a lot for the answer @melvimbe !

I see the complexity. The goal is to identify the music that’s played on venues to report it to the pertinent collective management organization for a fair distribution of royalties. Most of venues we work with have regular audio systems where it’s easy to take one output from a mixing desk and plug it to our devices. With venues with Sonos systems I’m not sure yet how to achieve that or if it’s even possible. The need for an extra device in each venue that costs almost 500€ may be a deal breaker for this.

 

If  your clients aren’t using the right music services, then a potential custom option is to have a device on the same network that periodically pings Sonos through the open API and return what’s currently playing in the different zones, then keeps a log.  This would work well, unless what’s currently playing is from an aux source, not a streaming service.    For that case you’d need a recording device like you’re suggesting.

If  your clients aren’t using the right music services, then a potential custom option is to have a device on the same network that periodically pings Sonos through the open API and return what’s currently playing in the different zones, then keeps a log.

This is very easy with SoCo-CLI, using the ‘track_follow’ or ‘track_follow_compact’ actions. Just leave the action running and it will print out timestamped track/channel information every time the track or channel changes.

https://github.com/avantrec/soco-cli

The caveat that @melvimbe mentioned still applies, of course.

Hello guys!

Sorry I’ve been a bit busy. 

Thanks a lot for all that information, I’ll need to have a deeper look to understand it.

I really appreciate your answers!

Here’s an example of SoCo-CLI ‘track_follow_compact’ output, in case it’s useful:

 

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