Radio-Canada's Ici Musique?

Thanks.  When you are attributing “silence and excuses” to Sonos are you talking about what Bruce (aka Airgetiam) and I wrote, or have you actually asked Sonos to do something through some channel directed to Sonos?  I’m just a customer, like you, albeit a generally happy one, trying to help another one.  I can’t speak for Bruce but I would guess that he is likely in the same position.  You are welcome to criticize me as an individual for what I say, but it’s kind of unfair to Sonos, if this is what you are doing, to attribute my statements to them and criticize them for that. 

To get back to your question, which I think is about the CBC service on Sonos.  I am outside of Canada,  I have available the “CBC Radio & Music” service on my Sonos, and i just installed it and it offers me two listening options, CBC Radio One and CBC Music On Air.  I think your complaint is that there aren’t more options on this service.

When I try to listen to several other CBC music streams and podcasts on my computer, I get an error message saying they are unavailable outside of Canada.  But in the USA I CAN get, including on my Sonos, through TuneIn, CBC Radio One channels from Yellowknife and about 30 other places ranging from Toronto to Thunder Bay.  I can also get ICI Musique channels from about a dozen Canadian locations.  My TuneIn favorite stations include CBC Radio Three, so that was once available to Sonos users outside of Canada, though it does not seem to work for me anymore.

That CBC has made a “service” available on Sonos is more than what other public “major national broadcasters” have done - I don’t see NPR, BBC, or the A(ustralian) or S(outh)A(frican) BCs, for example, listed among Sonos services, only the CBC.  It’s almost entirely private, for-profit companies that make the music services that are available on Sonos, and they do it for commercial reasons, to get more customers and revenue.  So kudos to the CBC for spending the time and money to make a music service that is available on Sonos as a “customer service” benefit to their listeners even though the CBC doesn’t get added revenue from it.  Go Canada.

But then why is that CBC music service kinda lousy?  Why doesn’t it include more than two CBC streams?  It could be that the CBC didn’t want to put THAT much work into building their Sonos music service, or that they wanted to keep it simple to limit their future customer-service and maintenance work on it.  But I am guessing that whatever reasons, quite possibly legal restrictions, the CBC does not let me in the United States listen to their podcasts and other music-streaming channels are the same reasons the CBC does not offer those choices in their Sonos music service.  That’s just a longwinded guess, though, as to why the CBC decided to do as it did, to try to help you answer your question.  I hope it is some use.

Or is your issue (re-reading the original) that you can’t use TuneIn for some reason, so the fact that it’s available through TuneIn is unhelpful & you need it to be available under Sonos Radio? 

If that’s the question, sorry to misunderstand.  Under Sonos Radio, when I search for ICI Musique, I see ICI Musique versions for about ten Canadian locations, though oddly not Montreal, the one we listen to on TuneIn.  They are Toronto, Vancouver, Moncton, Trois-Rivieres, etc.  Maybe this was fixed as a result of your raising it? 

I am in the USA, fwiw.

Sure.  You could add it to Sonos Favorites to make it a little less “roundabout”. 

Agreed. Sonos needs to show that it wants to reach all Canadians, anglophone and francophone. RadCan is a public broadcaster, largely supported with tax dollars. Furthermore, its radio and music services are commercial-free.

I know there are Radio Canada radio and music service apps. What’s the big deal in adding them?

Thanks. I use my iPhone, iPads and rarely my Mac for Sonos. But I will try to follow your trail of breadcrumbs. Thanks.

Hey… I just looked around some more and now CJBC-FM (my fave!) is there in Toronto local radio.

Thanks for your reply. I never would have checked again.

Antonia

Meme chose.

I  tried but there seemed to be no way to do that

It’s not hard, but also not super apparent.

The method and terminology (My Sonos, or Sonos Favorites) may depend on which app are you using - Windows, Mac, iPhone. etc.  But the method appears, at least on my Windows Sonos controller app, to be the same whether you used TuneIn or Sonos Radio to get to the radio station.  Next to the name of the station is a button for a drop-down menu (the button only appears when you hover your mouse over the station name), and one option on the menu is “Add to Sonos Favorites.”

More at this discussion

Good luck.

There are usually legal ramifications around using other people’s content without express permission, but I can understand your perspective. It just isn’t the way Sonos has ever done business. You could get more information at the Sonos partners page.

“That’s the way we’ve always done it” is such a classic cop-out.  

When I say we expect Sonos to super-serve its customers, what I mean is when there is a request to add what is, frankly, a major national broadcaster, we expect Sonos to proactively reach out to that broadcaster on our behalf and do what it takes to get them onto the platform.

That’s a big difference from putting up a webpage that essentially says, “Hey broadcasters, sign up if you want to.”

I would also expect Sonos to respond to its customers who have been asking for this with a status update, even if it’s only to say, “We tried and they refused, here’s why.” That’s what I expect from a company to which we have paid a high cost for for a premium service. 

In my business, the kind of silence and excuses I’m seeing on an issue like this would be completely unacceptable.  

I think Google is evil. Lots of reasons for that opinion all of which I can’t be bothered to share here. But hey, here’s one: Google has systematically destroyed local newspapers. Just like Facebook!

Off topic anyway.

As for your statement re. “the background elevator crowd,” it is to laugh. Again, trolling. Or, at the very least, thread hijacking. FTR: I have many self-curated playlists, via my Macs or other Apple devices, as well as Spotify.  I must have thousands of CDs I no longer know what to do with. So we’re not all easy listening types.

Back to the topic at hand:

With respect to Radio-Canada, I got another form email the other day:

<Bonjour,

Ce message est pour vous informer que votre demande est toujours en cours et que nos équipes travaillent dessus. Nous sommes désolés pour ce délai de traitement.

Si votre problème est résolu ou que vous souhaitez ajouter des précisions à votre demande, vous pouvez simplement répondre à ce courriel.

L'équipe d'assistance de Radio-Canada>

So I am giving it time, while enjoying the three Ones, one Move, one TV Beam and one Five spread all over my condo (and condo balcony.)

Have a nice day.