With the introduction of Sonos Radio the company is now throwing up advertisements for Stations it thinks I might want to listen to. WTF? If they want to expand their services, fine - but I have zero interest in Sonos Radio. I don’t listen to it and will not subscribe to it. I see a lot of people asking how to remove it from the Services even. Of course Sonos won’t let you remove it (which is terrible in its own right) but whatever… The argument goes “you don’t have to use it”. Well that argument only goes so far when Sonos starts pushing the service on me without my consent. 

These are not audible ads while listening to Radio, to be clear. These are prompts to use Radio WITHIN the Sonos controller app. Example: while in the “Search” page browsing through my own damn library the app throws up card telling me I should really be listening to some Dolly Parton Holiday Station (!!!??!). It steals the focus and you have to engage, either X-ing the promotion closed or clicking the big “Play Now” button. 

When discussing this Sonos support the first few agents simply told me I was lying; that these pushed ads didn’t exist. They even had the audacity to tell me I was wrong based on my account activity, which they had pulled up right in front of them. I had to upload a screenshot before an agent would be truthful and acknowledge it. But at that time I was told that the only recourse was to subscribe to Radio, and these ads would go away. How nonsensical… It’s either extortion or scripted ignorance. 

I’m sick and tired of Sonos pulling the rug out from under users and constantly changing who and what they are in the market. I am cutting off Sonos from my network and moving to soundsync.app to control my very expensive Sonos speakers via AirPlay. I encourage anyone else as upset as I am to voice their opinions and do the same. Sonos doesn’t give two s$its about users. As a publicly traded company their fiduciary responsibility is to make money for shareholders. That’s it. End of line. So they only way to gain traction on positive change for the good of the Sonos community is to speak up and spend your dollars elsewhere.