Which station? Some stations invoked via TuneIn hook an ad before connecting to the service. At a guess it’s a TuneIn thing, rather than Sonos.

If the ads are appearing between tracks then they must have been inserted by the actual station.

Radio X ad appears mid song and only started happening since change to Sonos S1 which could be coincidental idk

Same here -- I’m hearing ads for TuneIn occasionally when starting non-commercial stations like WWOZ.

Your question should be to TuneIn. Sonos doesn’t alter the stream. 

Thanks, Airgetlam

TuneIn says: “We just started doing pre-roll ads on Sonos.” I’ll be looking more closely at radio.com

I suspect you’ll find similar things on any ‘free’ service, as there isn’t anything that is really ‘free’. You either pay a subscription, or you get to listen to advertising. Sometimes both. 

Yes, but whereas I can listen to Spotify Premium through Sonos, “It’s not possible to add a TuneIn Pro or Premium account to Sonos.” (This is from Sonos’s FAQ)
https://support.sonos.com/s/article/83?language=en_US

Yep, I have the same issue, I can’t listen to baseball games, when they were occurring, on Sonos either. I originally set up a line in from my Mac to a PLAY:5, but eventually went with AirPlay 2 instead. There have been many instances of folks requesting they add TuneIn Premium, and I’ve even contacted TuneIn, but so far nothing. 

Except on the leftish BBC, and the radio streams from DR and NRK.  Even in the US there’s Radio Paradise.

I suspect there are many others without advertising … how about ABC stations from Australia?

If you mean ‘aggregators’ as opposed to actual radio streams, then there are alternatives to Tunein, eg. radio.net, MyTuner, etc.

You forgot to mention NPR. 

It’s a challenging and in my eyes unsustainable to give something away for free forever. You might be able to do it for a limited time as a marketing ploy, or to garner enough users to sell them other products, but eventually, there’s a cost that needs to be met. Salaries, servers, bandwidth, content. None of these things are free. 

Well, yes.  But, none of the ‘socialised’ services have a direct charge to the listener.  They are free at the point of delivery being funded in part via general taxation or a hypothecated broadcast tax .   I suppose ad-supported services are also free at the point of delivery but the listener is often overwhelmed by repetitive ads.   

Personallly, I refuse to tune in to such sources with one exception: German radio (and I believe TV also) has advertising limited to a maximum amount every hour and the ads are always broadcast at a specific time slot at the end of the hour.  The metadata signal this period as ‘Advertising’.

Yes, same here.

Since S1 I’m getting TuneIn ads at irregular intervals (not just pre-roll) I know it’s not part of the station broadcast because the ads are watermarked with an audible “Tune in” before playing. The other day it got stuck in a loop and played the same ad over and over again until I hit stop. I had zoned out on work but my GF complained that the ad had been going on repeat for a while. 

Found this thread by googling the issue. 

I have had the same issues on Sonos radio stations (On the S1 App I cant choose TuneIn any longer). Quite painful ! 

Fair enough nothing continue to be free but one can stream directly from various radio programs but that option is not made available on Sonos either !