Free Sonos radio has been a major bust in my house so not that excited. It’s free so no shade on sonos just not to my taste.

$7.99 is more than double what I would pay.

If the content is good I would pay for human curated content. But this is competing with several on demand services, nuggs.net, sirius and my own music so for me to buy in it would need to be very good and cheap. But I probably can’t have both.

For the monthly fee I would expect mobile and web apps. I do more listening on my phone/car/laptop than sonos.

What’s the HD content here? Reading the release I see CD quality, not HD. I don’t think I am being pedantic by bringing this up. 

Finally, this is pure speculation but with Sonos moving to optional (for now) monthly service fees and adding newer speakers to upgrade program they are signalling some future changes that make me nervous.

I hope I am wrong but past behavior doesn’t make me confident. I am definitely rethinking purchases for family christmas. Kids will get cheaper small Homepods and I won’t replace my Raspberry Pi players.  

I have signed up to the free trial, but am unlikely to renew for these reasons:

• Half my listening is to classical, but only two classical stations available,
• Sonos HD is not HD but lossless CD quality (which is what I had assumed the free Sonos radio to be anyway, disappointing),
• Too expensive for what it is, unless Sonos significantly increase the content, especially classical,
• Sonos are ripping-off the British consumer: $8.00 in the US, $10.50 in Britain.

I’ve generally been happy with Sonos radio, and I haven’t found the ads to be too annoying.  I don’t know that the HD quality, and the hours I listen each month, is going to justify $8 a month.

Yes, the ability to use the service while not at home would make a big difference for me.

HD isn’t a definite term that corresponds to any specific audio quality.  Sonos HD is actually the same exact quality as Amazon’s HD.  You’re correct though that others will assume HD means 24 bit.  

https://www.amazon.com/music/unlimited/why-hd?ref=dmm_LP_WHYHD

I do think that the upgrade program could be an indication of future system features to come, but I can’t imagine it’s going to mean a repeat of the S1/S2 split.   It obviously couldn’t be about HD quality audio, but it could be a feature that only works on the more modern speakers...that I can’t really imagine right now.

It could also be just a customer loyalty program, perhaps trying to fix some bad relationships.  And other thought I had, is that perhaps Sonos isn’t getting sales from existing customers like they want, and this just boosts the numbers.  

I am most curious with how the speakers actually support HD as I thought everyone was making a stink about them not supporting various high def formats. As far as the service, they will just need to continue adding more variety stations so it takes the place of my SiriusXM online subscription. I see this as a compliment to my Apple Music subscription. I wish you could have the ability to use it with the Move with Bluetooth as well as having an outside home service as well. Also as I play with it I wish you could save songs into a playlist as well. Just initial thoughts. 

The older speakers, the ones that can now only work in an S1 system, can not support HD.  That’s the reason why Sonos Radio HD is only available in S2.

Before I posted I googled HD audio to see what it meant and saw that Wikipedia says its HiRes. Not that this is the definitive word, I mean it’s wikipedia, but I had never heard CD quality referred to as HD Quality and wikipedia was backing it up. But by your comment I take it to mean that Sonos Radio HD - the HD is part of the name, a marketing term, not an indication of bit depth or whatever. Which I can understand

Amazon was the first to pull this stunt of labelling what they do - CD quality - as HD to suit their marketing convenience, so why can't Sonos?!

But then why can't S1 play Sonos Radio HD? The ability to play CD quality has been there in Sonos from day 1. Only to force upgrades therefore?

Not that personally I care or need it, I find that both Spotify 320 kbps and apple music 256 kbps music sounds just as good as lossless cd rips from my server.

Aside from content and hardware issues don’t forget your ears.

Can you actually hear a difference in the plain versus HD music?

I can’t, so why would I pay more for it?

What do you mean plain and what do you mean HD?

Good question; unlike in the world of TV where things like HD Ready, HD, 4K and now 8K are clearly defined, HD audio is not. So Amazon and now Sonos can attach HD to whatever suits them at the time.

Perhaps because the resolving power of the human ear is much lower than that of the human eye, this fuzzy situation has long prevailed, even for things like a common definition for “audiophile kit”, for which there is none in technical terms, leaving that to be understood as whatever is more expensive than kit at mass manufacture scale benefited price points of makes like Sonos.

I signed up for the trial and now get “unable to connect to sonos radio - the connection was lost”. It still works on S1 item.

does seem overpriced for the few stations I would listen to.

I predicted a subscription service in a post a few months back. I think it’s the inevitable outcome of floating the company - they now have to demonstrate ways of increasing revenue streams for their shareholders. In the U.K  the U.S ads from the free version seem bizarre and irrelevant.

If Sonos wish to commoditise streaming music that’s their business but I see nothing new or even as good as other available services. What really concerns me is if Sonos were to start “encouraging” (forcing) users to access their streams by removing Tunein etc from the app. I’m not trying to demonise Sonos, heaven knows I own enough of their products but I have a healthy scepticism when companies join an already crowded marketplace with less than stellar offerings. Currently I have a choice between Sonos Radio and Tunein versions of all the stations I wish to use. I’ve tried both and am now going to switch everything to Tunein. Should Sonos choose to “encourage” me to use their service that would be the end of my use of their products. That may sound dramatic and hopefully will prove unnecessary but corporate arm twisting is not for me. 

I doubt Sonos would force you as all the stations appear to be from Tune in apart from their bespoke ones. But who knows with big tech.

Regulators in the US I believe are beginning to look in to the separation of the hardware and software on certain platforms to avoid such issues.
 

Sonos Radio HD sounds good but choice needs to widen considerably to be worth the price.

@Beagle it doesn't sound dramatic. I think Sonos Radio uses tunein for their non Sonos stations, (based on the tunein branded cover art). Just a guess, but it wouldn't be a stretch to see Sonos drop the TuneIn plugin and default to Sonos - allowing Sonos to insert ads at the beginning of streams etc or implement premium features for $$  

This wouldn't push me away based on my listening habits but can see how it might for other owners. 

Interesting times with Sonos for sure. 

It should be standard for what you are buying into with Sonos in the first place.

So lets get this right Sonos launch a radio service a few months back that quickly broke down, because it couldnt provide the very thing that people wanted, the ability to listen to overseas radio stations. Sonos then launch an “HD” version with the same problems, and then expect you to pay a subscription fee per month for the privilege? Thanks Sonos but no thanks ! 

Shouldn’t Sonos be HD in the first place?  That’s what I was getting at with my comment earlier.  Companies that make hardware don’t do well trying to make bring software into the picture in my opinion.  For example, Microsoft made software, then ventured into hardware.  How long did it take for them to succeed, if you consider their latest products a success?

The standard bitrate for radio broadcast is 64 kbps to 128 kbps.

https://radio.co/blog/best-radio-station-bitrate#:~:text=128kbps%20is%20the%20standard%20bitrate%20every%20broadcaster%20should%20be%20using.

I’ll be the slight contrarian. I do enjoy the quality of the new streams, and can definitely hear the difference. That said they need to strengthen their HD offerings quickly to sustain their price point. If they can, it seems more of a threat to Pandora than other services, and the lack of an out-of-home option is a real pain point.

The other odd part is that looking at the HD offerings, I have no sense of what audience they are targeting.

Sonos can only offer HD for their own radio stations.

pFootnote] For Sonos-owned and operated stations only. Excludes global broadcast stations.

https://www.sonos.com/en-us/sonos-radio?utm_source=ENsonoscommunity

Overpriced for what it is.  And angry that I can no longer remove the service.  I have Apple Music and Wife has Spotify…  Apple has human curated stations, including a few talking heads for banter and Spotify has excellent recommendation algorithms…  so other than 16/44.1 FLAC on a few stations I don’t know what the service brings compared to AM or Spotify and it doesn't also include on demand access to a giant catalog of music as well for the same price.  

If they spent the time and energy making new HW or upgraded S2 more with features users ask for…  I’d love a fix for the Move battery drain issue,  but I imagine they are pursuing revenue streams and eying their speakers as a HaaS rather than products.

I’ve taken up the free offer today. I like it so far. Great choice, no ads and it sounds incredible on my system.(I think!!). I’ll see how much it is used before deciding to carry on the subscription as I feel £8 is a little too much possibly.

What is really pissing me off right now is that I have this ad popping up asking me to try Radio HD. This happens while I’m using the app, trying to play music.

I would have thought that sonos would not want to get in the way of their users actually playing music.

I’m all for advertising, but this is so annoying that I’m very close to returning the entire thing.

Advertising at me, while I’m trying to listen to my music, for a service I may never use seems like overstepping boundaries.

I find it very annoying that Sonos pushed so hard for us to upgrade our older “S1” hardware, at great cost, and within months is pushing a subscription model over that new hardware.  Is this only the start?  Are they going to keep chipping away until we have to pay them monthly for the “privilege” of using our expensive Sonos hardware?  I love my Sonos devices but have no desire to pay the monthly for sub-par content when I already paid them a premium for the hardware. 

The problems you’re referring to are TuneIn radio problems, not problems with the custom stations Sonos created.  While those issues are real, its not accurate to imply that the whole service is broken.  If you are only interested in the overseas/terrestrial radio stations, then absolutely, there is no point in getting Sonos Radio HD, or even using Sonos Radio really, unless you just like the interface better or something like that.  However, people are clearly interesting in the custom radio stations (I am), otherwise they would have proceeded with Sonos Radio HD.

That seems highly unlikely to me,  I don’t think Sonos radio is a way to slowly convert everything over to a subscription model.  I see it as Sonos trying to leverage the customer base they have established for ‘easy’ money.  That sounds worse that it actually is, but I just mean that they did the business analysis and figured that given the volume of customers they have now, Sonos Radio can pay for itself and bring in revenue.  Customers can take it or leave it as they wish.

I do think there is problem in selling devlces that come with free software upgrades and maintenance over it’s lifetime.  The cost of running the software eventually eats whatever profit was made in the sale.  Unless the hardware dies after a certain number of years, but that certainly doesn’t help sell devices.